Downtime

Who will win the Office Wars? IT? Sales? Frankly, we don't care - just so long as we get to join in the fun!

The British National Party was on high alert when a computer system used by South Cambridgeshire council recorded that there were thousands of South American people living within its boundaries.

A glitch on a computer being used to record the electoral roll had a problem assigning people with a nationality. The computer recorded any citizen where the nationality was not known as Guyanese.

The BNP will no doubt have been reassured by that most British explanation of government IT failure.

Downtime has learnt, through an unwisely directed PR e-mail, of a website aimed at reducing the time needed to make a prank call by automating the process.

The website, hoaxcall.com, allows users to arrange prank calls to friends, relatives and, more likely, people they want to piss off, at the touch of a button.

It is all harmless fun, says the creator, who no doubt loves nothing more than having his time wasted by feckless idiots with nothing better do.

Downtime doubts whether time commitments in prank calling are a significant problem, but is always willing to applaud entrepreneurship.

It makes us wonder what other nuisance behaviours could be automated. Perhaps vandals could be replaced by grafitti-spraying droids. What about a reckless driving auto-pilot function on cars? The opportunities are endless; all you need is a bad idea and PR firm willing to take your money.

It is good to see that politicians are using technology to help them prise votes from the electorate. Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown have both separately pledged to improve access to the internet.

Tax cuts used to be key to winning over voters but Gordon wants to give laptops and broadband to poor families while Boris wants London to become "a Wi-Fi city" where the internet is available anywhere and everywhere.

But what the government gives with one hand it takes with the other. "A large Hadron Collider for all" will be the next political flier to come through your letterbox. 

The Financial Services Authority has gone on red alert in the wake of the shocking news that a third of students are constantly overdrawn.

The financial services watchdog is introducing a financial education programme to 50 more universities this year because young people are least able to manage their finances among UK adults (preparing them well for a future in banking).

Downtime reckons software suppliers should get in on the act because there is evidently a need for accounting solutions in the student community, and the government is clearly throwing money at them. 

Downtime was interested in reading that the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva will be shut off until spring 2009 while engineers probe a magnet failure. The so-called God Particle will have to wait a bit longer, but we hope not as long as electronic patient care records. 

Here at Downtime we tire of spelling out acronyms. And this is about to get worse if the current consolidation in the banking sector continues.

It looks like we could soon have HTSBOS for one, or possibly even MLLBBHSBCAABNBoA, advertising itself as the world's only bank. 

Does cloud computing confuse you? Not us. Because "the degree to which we can help our customers become more cloud-like internally will actually enable them to federate more easily with external clouds offered by suppliers selling computing resources," according to one suppler.

Whatever happened to blue-sky thinking?

Downtime was surprised to hear that Taliban fighters have found the ultimate weapon to avoid capture... Skype.

Security sources say that, unlike mobile calls, which can be monitored by RAF Nimrod spy planes, Skype calls are heavily encrypted, making them secure.

Downtime bets they bid and buy weapons of mass destruction from eBay and use Paypal's secure payment system too. If only we could work out where they store them. 

Switching on the Large Hadron Collider underneath the Swiss Alps has had the unintended consequence predicted by chaos theory, namely the implosion of the world's financial system.

Instead of smashing protons together to create the universe, the unleashed forces are having the equal and opposite effect, smashing bankrupt banks together as trillions of dollars disappear into a financial black hole.