IT Sneak

End of the critic?

2008-07-07T09:05:24Z

Sneak has read with undisguised contempt some new research by Avail Intelligence, suggesting that the role of the journalist as an arbiter of taste and quality, an oracle for the masses, is slowly unraveling. Yes, thanks to that damn Web 2.0 phenomenon, it seems that consumers are more inclined to get their pre-purchasing advice from social networks like Facebook, or iTunes recommendations.

Alright, to be honest the research just applies to music, so it doesn't bother Sneak that much, after all, most music critics are over-privileged pretentious buffoons who seek to name-drop and reference as many bands as possible in a single article to show how clever and sagely they are. But Sneak is slightly worried that this trend might continue into other spheres. Could the IT hack's days be numbered too? Noooooo!

Rock n' roll commissioner

2008-07-02T16:59:06Z

Sometimes politicians do things of which they should be very, very ashamed. Perhaps starting a war on spurious legal and moral grounds in which hundreds of thousand are likely to die. Or maybe lying under oath. But possibly the most reprehensible thing a politician can do, and don't they do it so often, is to try and get "down with the kids". Really, the history of world politics has been littered with cringeworthy incidents and press calls gone wrong, possibly culminating in Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia" shindig at Number 10 in which rockers, comedians and others staggered around the PM's residence wondering what the hell they were doing there, will Teflon Tone turned up his smile for the cameras.

And now this. The pic shows EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding, at the Cannes film festival this year. OK, so she's also there with EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barosso. But who the hell is that dude in the shades? You're not fooling us Viv, we know you've no idea who he is. Um, actually, Sneak isn't sure either ... is he perhaps a member of a popular music band?

Biiru Sir?

2008-07-02T16:34:03Z

Sneak always worries that the technology dreamt up by those clever boffins he used to bully at school is somehow being misused. Where are the applications of IT wonderment that can truly make our lives better, he wonders, on a little too frequent a basis. Well, thank the lord for Asahi, the Japanese beverage and beer company, which has finally found a use for robotics.

Mr Asahi, or Asahi-san if you want to be really accurate, is the firm's answer to all of our bar queuing prayers. And the good news is he's coming to town. Yes folks, the world's first robotic barman can serve a pint in under two minutes, and will be available for our enjoyment at Selfridges.

Attack of the Human-Cocoa hybrids from Mars

2008-06-26T16:25:00Z

So, High Performance Computing (HPC) has a new focus - cocoa quality, and it looks like the US agriculture boffins, confectioneer Mars and HPC titan IBM will be digging through the protein sequence they'll get from a complete mapping of cocoa DNA, to be able to pinpoint factors they'd like to retain to improve the crop.

HPC has undergone quite a change since Seymour Cray started manufacturing his liquid refrigerant cooled X-MP systems, and today's clustered computing systems have taken over number crunching the jobs Sneak used to queue on the mighty Cray's Inbox for it to chomp through. Even financial services firms seem to deploying these systems to calculate exactly where they went wrong - selling over-priced houses to people who couldn't afford them.

Will the power of HPC result in chocolate tasting so exquisite, they'll have to actually reduce the size of said Mars Bars. Sneak supposes that anything could be possible, once the genetic engineers are let loose on cocoa DNA with their molecular spanners - a tweak here and a nudge there, and before you know it, something - 'Not of this Earth', could appear.

Now that the Government's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is wafting round the Houses of Parliament, Sneak wonders how long it will be before the first Human-Cocoa hybrid, launches on an unsuspecting world. Of course, the bill says that no hybrid would be allowed to develop after 14 days, but two weeks in the life of such a beast - could well be enough to grow something quite spectacular.

Sneak will leave that to your fertile imagination - but is trying hard to stop thinking of a giant Smartie with Tony Blair's face on it.

HPC - it's not all good news.

A stolid foundation

2008-06-26T10:34:12Z

Very occasionally, when circumstances dictate, Sneak has to make an epic journey to the Highlands to visit relatives, who live in a traditional crofter's cottage in the wilds of Morayshire. A few miles from this rustic bolt-hole is the Findhorn Foundation.

Located on the shores of the Lossie estuary, the Foundation serves as a retreat where yoghurt-knitters and tree-huggers come from around the world to recharge their psychic batteries.

Sneak was reminded of this when he read about the Symbian Foundation, the new body tasked with developing an open-source unified handset platform that will be available royalty-free to any handset maker that wishes to use it.

It seems to Sneak that the word "foundation" has become short-hand for any endeavour that seeks to promote itself as being altruistic. It's supposed to conjure up positive feelings and kind thoughts. Indeed, Sneak is convinced that if Microsoft started calling itself the Redmond Foundation, any negative feelings for the vendor that IT managers might harbour would disappear.

Are we there yet with Sat Nav?

2008-06-23T16:14:57Z

BSc. (Hons) Philosophy exam question number one : Satellite navigation has a positive effect on driving safety - discuss.

Sneak was amazed to be the recipient of a survey from self-proclaimed leading 'navigations solution provider' TomTom recently, which had him gnashing his teeth in denial at its findings.

For instance, one of the questions was, "The use of satellite navigation devices heightens awareness and reduces the stress levels of the driver."

Well, Sneak supposes it does when the device 'does what it says on the tin', but there wasn't a question in the survey like this one - "The use of satellite navigation gets you to your destination the majority of the time."

Constantly checking a Sat Nav device on the dashboard must detract from your awareness of what's going down on the road - doesn't it? What's wrong with letting your partner navigate using a roadmap ... ermm ... but then again.

Damn fine coffee

2008-06-20T02:05:29Z

What keeps you awake at night? How you're going to justify an increase in IT budget in an increasingly gloomy economic climate?; how you're going to maximise RoI from the massive content management implementation it's taken five years to complete?; or who's going to win this year's Big Brother? Well, if the answer to this question is "none of the above", then maybe this is: coffee.

You see, according to reports, an Australian man recently discovered that his internet-enabled Jura F90 coffee maker is full of securfity vulnerabilities which could allow hackers to take over his PC. The risk advisory manager did the decent thing and reported the flaws to a security email list. No fix for it yet though....so better think twice before investing in one for the office.

You've got mail

2008-06-20T01:42:14Z

Is it Sneak or is Yahoo becoming more and more like a teenager with a rather serious crush? Oh, it's just Sneak then. Never mind. Well, for what it's worth, here are the rather dubious parallels. First Yahoo creates an unprecedented, um, precedent, by getting into bed with Google - ie signalling its intent to allow Google to serve up ads next to its own search engine results for pre-determined search terms.

And now Yahoo has announced a new email domain - ymail.com - which it says will "give users the chance to register the email address they always wanted". Yeah, ymail/gmail - anyone see the similarities?

Secure docs

2008-06-19T08:59:43Z

As if we didn't know this already, more evidence has emerged that when it comes to data security, human beings are well thick, innit. This time the poor victims were patients at St George's hospital in Tooting, around 20,000 of them to be precise, whose records have been stolen from said premises.

A total of six unencrypted laptops holding sensitive data on them went missing a wee while back, but the news has only just emerged as hospital administrators finally 'fess up and contact the unlucky ones. Apparently the hospital was unprepared for a concerted attempt to rob it of its IT property. Which I'm sure will make us all sleep pretty well tonight.

Rocket man

2008-06-19T08:29:04Z

The news, which you've all probably read by now, but then Snealk is being a bit slow this week, is that noveau riche super internet mogul-type character Sergey Brin has put a downpayment of a lot-of-million dollars on a space flight to the International Space Station. Take off isn't for a couple of years yet, apparently, so the Google co-founder has plenty of time to think about what he's done, sorry, about what he's going to do up there.

So what exactly does a multi-billion dollar geek do with a few days to kill in zero gravity? Um, try and master the space toilets perhaps, or do those funny forward summersaults that every space traveller feels compelled to pull when they're on camera - yeah guys, seen it before (yawn). Or maybe he could think about how Google can twist the Yahoo knife a bit more in Microsoft's back.

Flying close to the sun

2008-06-19T02:13:12Z

So what is it about human kind and that almost suicidal inclination towards hubris? Whether it's building a massive ship, then branding it "unsinkable", then sailing it perilously close to an even more massive iceberg, or maybe creatin some strange wing like appendages, then flying too close to the sun, etc etc. We seem to have a preternatural desire to be the architects of our own downfall.

So when Mozilla - remember, the people that brought you the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client - decided it would try and go for the world record for number of downloads, to coincide with and publicisie the popularity of its new Firefox 3 software, something bad was bound to happen. And it did, well, nothing on the scale of mass genocide, but it must have been a bit embarassing for the firm when its servers crashed after a few hours because they couldn't cope with the load. It's not as if there was much of a record to beat anyway - Guiness Book officials have never acknowledged such a category before.

Leave the keyboard alone

2008-06-19T01:23:12Z

There's nothing so unpleasant as finding a friend or loved one in the throes of addiction. Perhaps it was brought on by a troubled childhood, or self esteem issues, but whatever the reason, it can be painful for the outsiders as they're forced to look on helplessly. Take a colleague who is clearly addicted to electronic forms of communication, for instance. They would rather ping off thousands of pointless emails and engage in banal IM banter about who's being a bitch in the office that day, than get any meaningful work done.

So thank the lord for a new non-profit group - the Information Overload Research Group - which has just been set up with the backing of Google, IBM, Microsoft and others to research and highlight the problems of the great "digital distraction" in our working lives caused by technology. Yes, it's a problem - we're all aware that just as technology can be an enabler, it can also add complications to our lives if not managed correctly, but really, Google? And Microsoft? Who between them, and Yahoo, probably carve up most of the global webmail market? Telling us to find new ways of not using our email etc so much? Sneak detects just a hint of giganto-corps looking to soften their image with a timely CSR outreach message..

From Belgium with love

2008-06-11T15:25:42Z

Sometimes Sneak wonders what anyone has ever done for him. I mean, take the Belgians for example; apart for a love of mussels, chips and mayonnaise - in that order - and maybe artisan chocolate, oh and Trappist ales, and possibly little statues of weeing boys - no forget that one - Sneak has very little idea why they even exist.

Oh no, wait. It has come to Sneak's attention that two Belgian beer fans have just created a new technology wonder for our modern world. Billed as "the ultimate urinating experience", this nifty item features sensors on the inside of the urinal which are hooked up to a monitor and software behind the cistern. Users can then use their golden jets to perhaps fire at space invaders, or vote for candidates in election polls. Perhaps you may be thinking of diverting that discretionary spend away from power efficient servers now, eh?

Pimpin' is BT

2008-06-10T13:38:59Z

Rather alarmingly BT is offering to 'pimp' Sneak's broadband, well, that's what a press release says anyway. "BT's home IT support service pledges to pimp your broadband or your money back" it screamed, in capital letters.

According to the release, "BT has started up a new help service to tune up customers’ computers with a money back guarantee to speed up their broadband", how this involves pimping remains to be seen.

Wikipedia defines a pimp thus, "A pimp finds and manages clients for prostitutes and engages them in prostitution (in brothels in most cases and some cases street prostitution) in order to profit from their earnings". Hmmm, Sneak is struggling a bit here.

Further reading tells us that, "in the first years of the 21st century, a new meaning of the word has emerged in the form of a transitive verb which means 'to decorate'", which again doesn't really apply to a boosted broadband connection from a large telco.

Perhaps BT, given its standing, reputation, and association with old ladies played by Maureen Lipman should refrain from using such language, and leave that to the players, hustlas and hoes.

Why robot?

2008-06-10T12:21:22Z

Clever boffins strike again. It's the Japanese way to come up with yet more weird and wonderful technological inventions to astound and amaze. First the heated toilet seat and now this: the perfect woman. Well, that's what scientists Etienne Fresse and Yoichi Yamato claim to have invented – a female robot designed to satisfy every male fantasy, including cooking, cleaning and erm, massaging, according to reports. Sneak isn't too sure about the enterprise applications of this particular IT aide, who has been christened Lisa, incidentally. Maybe you could get her to clean the server room out, or make you a nice cup of tea as you draw up your budgets for the next financial year.