Honesty is not something Sneak instinctively expects from the IT industry's assorted PR departments so it was extremely refreshing to hear an unvarnished response during a recent call to a leading global telco, to find out its stance on the EU's investigation into taxing emails and text messages. "We tend not to comment on legislation when it is at the proposal stage," said the corporate mouthpiece. "Because what will happen is that the EU will spend two years looking at it and then come to the same conclusion as everyone else: that it’s a f***ing stupid idea."
Sneak can only imagine how much simpler the world would be if this represented the company's official line.

May 31, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak has long held that stock traders are grossly overpaid for doing a job that can typically be done equally well by a chimp with a stick. The latest evidence comes from researchers at Princeton University in the US. They have collected statistics to convincingly demonstrate that one of the biggest factors governing share price performance in the aftermath of an IPO is not to be found in the small print at the back of the launch prospectus - but in big letters on the cover. It seems the stock market gives lower values to firms with awkward names, regardless of the business factors that actually govern success. So get all post-modern and float your firm as Aeiou or Yuiop and you might as well flush fivers down the loo. Pick a nice, solid, easy-to-say name like Sneak Savings & Loan and you’re onto a winner, apparently.

May 30, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sneak quite enjoyed PC World’s round-up of the 25 worst tech products of all time, from the unwelcome unpleasantness of Comet Cursor and Windows Me to oddities like the Eyetop Wearable DVD Player and DigiScents iSmell, topped off by the enduring source of all the world’s unwanted CD-ROMs: AOL.

Given the torrent of trash that comes out of the arse-end of the tech industry, 25 is really too short a list to include everyone’s favourite stinkers. Sneak was dismayed, for example, to learn that the mint-imperial-shaped mouse that shipped with Apple’s first iMac only merited an honourable mention – despite being an unmentionable horror in Sneak’s book.

PC World’s list is also US-centric, and not just because the US is responsible for the bulk of the world’s junk tech, so Sneak would like to redress the balance of US xenophobia by suggesting a couple of local products that ought to be on the list.

Who could forget the Amstrad PCW8256, for example? It looked like a PC but had more in common with a broken typewriter; used odd-sized 3-inch floppy disks that were readily available from nowhere at all; and shipped with a dot-matrix printer that was “near letter quality” in much the same way that a hamster is nearly a llama.

And then there was BT Midband, which dies an unlamented death this summer. It was pitched as a half-way house between dial-up and broadband, but turned out to be dial-up with added nothing. It was promised with an always-on email facility, but problems meant that this, the main distinguishing feature, was still in the labs on launch day in May 2003 - and it was still in the labs this morning.

Sneak is sure that there must be an almost infinite list of similar misadventures in technology: feel free to send your own suggestions for the sin-bin.

May 26, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

People who think smart clothing refers to a suit and tie should get back to climbing their personal greasy pole. In Sneak’s book, smart clothing is the kind of apparel cooked up by Terence Arjo, a student at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Programme.

One project, dubbed Yo, Taxi!, features a coat with LEDs sewn into the cuff. When the wearer waves, the embedded lights flash on and off in synch with the movements of the arm to spell out “TAXI” in large letters, visible through the magic of persistence of vision, that even a blinkered London cabbie on his way home couldn't miss. This item would be particularly handy if it also included one of those traffic-light control devices that switch red traffic lights to green. OK, so they’re meant for the emergency services but they would also make Sneak’s crippling “follow that cab” bill a bit more affordable.

Those who can’t afford cabs have not been forgotten: another of Arjo’s brainchildren aims to restore the first casualty of overcrowded public transport – personal space. A coat covered with dangling plastic strips is normally perfectly passive, but get too close to the wearer and the strips bristle outwards like the spines of a porcupine.

Sneak would like a coat like this - but instead of harmless plastic strips, Sneak suggests using coat-hanger wire and the electrical subsystem from a cattle-prod.

May 22, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

As per every year, Sneak will be trying to roundly ignore the terrifying exercise in human ant-farming that is Big Brother. But as per every year, Sneak will no doubt fail miserably and end up letting every moment of every episode sluice into his brain like liquidised offal swirling down a plughole. While trawling the web to find alternative ways of mashing brain cells to a pasty pulp, Sneak somehow ended up navigating to the BB web site – just as sirens once lured sailors to their mangled doom on the rocks with promises of a bit of harmless fun. At the site, Sneak learned that contestant “Mikey” is not just an apparent genetic hybrid of gormless TV host Vernon Kay and Roberto, the Italian loser from last year. No, Mikey is, scarily, a software developer by trade. Or, to be precise, a “software developer and model”.

There can’t be many people who list both those occupations on their CV, which did set Sneak wondering. So, have any of you out there ever employed the skills of Mikey as either a bit-basher or as a clothes horse? And was he any good at either?

May 19, 2006 Television | Permalink | Comments (6)

Sneak was delighted to learn that denial of service attacks on email systems are not legal after all. As you may recall, a judge late last year opined that sending millions of messages to a company with the intention of causing IT difficulties was not a crime, as the mail servers were simply being put to the use for which they were provided. Sneak refrained from attempting to deliver a brown-paper-wrapped Transit van through the judge’s letterbox, and instead waited for the appeal. Fortunately for Sneak’s no-claims bonus, the Court of Appeals has ruled that while a computer owner might consent to receiving emails, the consent would not cover messages sent with the intention of disrupting the system.
Sneak wonders if the ruling can be extended to cover the myriad unwelcome firms who, taken together, mount a round-the-clock denial-of-paper attack on Sneak’s fax machine?

May 15, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

As you know Sneak is a lover of all things green. So Sneak was delighted to learn that Alan "I don't like bullshitters" Sugar has appointed his latest Apprentice, Michelle Dewberry (you know, the blonde one with the whining voice and artificial eyebrows), to head up Xenon Green, a new business for disposing of IT equipment in an environmentally-friendly manner.

It is particularly encouraging to note that "Suralan", the man behind the oh-so environmentally sound Amstrad PCW512 that Sneak had to lob in a skip in 1987 due to it having a floppy-drive format supported by nobody else on earth, now sees safe IT disposal as critical. So critical, in fact, that he is putting this vital new company under the sole charge of a 26-year-old telecoms consultant who got the job by proving she has what it takes to sell second-hand cars and work in TopShop.

Let's hope no one asks her to explain what WEEE is.

May 12, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lenovo has been celebrating its first year as custodian of IBM’s ThinkPad brand, and has given Sneak a lovely present of a Lenovo notebook. Sadly, all is not quite as it might appear. This notebook is the kind that you write in, with a pen - although it has a cardboard cover styled to look like a laptop. Still, Sneak can’t help wondering what this flimsy item might fetch on eBay with a suitably blurry picture and the right, carefully-worded description: “Lenovo notebook, new and unused, unwanted gift. No reserve. Opening bid £300...” No word a lie...

May 5, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (4)

There may be veritas in vino, but there’s evidently the odd bit of truth in typos too, as proven by SAP consultant Hamish Newlands in his blog (called, for excellent reasons, Cardboard Spaceship):
“My recent discussion of an article by William Pfaff, I talked about ‘off-shoring,’ only due to a typo I described it as ‘off-whoring.’”

May 4, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Concerned that your tin-foil hat is not completely eradicating the threat of radio-frequency identity (RFID) devices? Fortunately the web has the answer, or at least two enterprising German enthusiasts with a web site have the answer. Simply disassemble a disposable camera, throw away the film and the flash bulb, solder a hand-wound coil of wire to the high-discharge capacitor that normally powers the flash and, hey presto, you have a pocket electromagnetic-pulse generator, capable of frying the sensitive innards of RFID chips by overloading their inductive power-supply circuits.

As the German pair cautions, however, these home-brew liberation devices are not without their risks because (a) “RFID-zappers don’t comply with [Ofcom] rules” on radio broadcasts; (b) “If the capacitor is still charged fully or partly, you might catch yourself an electric shock”; and, most importantly, (c) “Soldering irons are known to be unpleasantly hot at the tip”.

May 3, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

With all the computerised gizmos to be found in a modern luxury car, you’d sometimes be forgiven for thinking you’d accidentally sat down in the cockpit of a plane. This confusion aside, there is no excuse for the latest publicity stunt, hatched by school-run vehicle specialist Land Rover. Someone at the company decided it would be a good idea to use the satellite navigation system fitted to the latest of its CO2-spewing 4x4s to navigate a Hercules plane (one of the few aircraft able to hoist the 2.7-tonne tank off the ground). According to the firm’s blurb – and a TV advert on show in the US - the plane was able to find its way from Nice to Corsica without mishap, guided only by the GPS system from the lardy Landie. Sneak does wonder what self-imposed challenge the firm will tackle next: can a servomotor from an electric seat be used as a makeshift club, to beat seal cubs to death, perhaps?

Update: Sneak has closed the comments on this post as it's all got a bit too boring for words. Yes, it's fine to use a 4x4 if you work in the emergency services, or the armed forces, or are a farmer, or have to tow a boat, or enjoy green-laning or mud-plugging at the weekends, or if you have a very small penis or get off on thinking that other people will envy you in your over-specified monstrosity. If, however, you have a large number of children to move, or if you think off-roading means bumping up the kerb outside the school gates, Sneak recommends using a people-carrier or, alternatively, slamming your head in the door of your 4x4.

May 2, 2006 Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (27)