Downtime

Major retailers are stocking special Diamond Jubilee remote controls for Sky boxes. So if you don't think you have been fleeced enough by the Royal family through your taxes you can spend almost £30 on a union Jack controller. WTF?

Downtime went to visit IT supplier Atos at the Technical Operations Centre (TOC) for the London Olympics.

There will be 900 servers, 1,000 network and security devices and more than 10,000 computers deployed to support London 2012. There will have been over 200,000 hours of testing of systems before the first athlete begins their pursuit of gold. You get the picture? Pretty pressurised, but I have to say meticulously planned.

Downtime had to use London Underground's Jubilee line to get there. The same line that thousands and thousands of spectators will be using to get to Olympic venues in Stratford. If my journey that morning was anything to go by there could be real problems.

It took seven trains to pass me before I could find room to squeeze onto one. And this is on the average day with workers flocking to Canary Wharf. Now picture the small matter of the Olympic Games thrown into the mix. I feel a PR survey coming on. You know the ones funded by a mobile IT supplier and used by a journalist to make it look like they actually do something on a slow news day.

Does a fox shit in the woods? Yes and we can tell you how many times.

Downtime was chatting to the business behind the data analytics carried out in the recent Channel 4 documentary series about the UK fox population.

The programme was an example of crowdsourcing with viewers sending in information which was then analysed by the number crunchers and their fancy software in the background.

The company behind it was telling me about how businesses are craving for services to help them make better use of customer confirmation. The fox data revealed some fascinating information. Foxes poo a lot and try to kill chickens.

You've heard of Robo-cop, now meet Robo-fish - the new aquatic pollution-fighter.

The machine is being tested off the cost of Spain to hunt down contamination in the water and feed information back to the shore.

"The idea is that we want to have real-time monitoring of pollution, so that if someone is dumping chemicals or something is leaking, we can get to it straight away, find out what is causing the problem and put a stop to it," explains Luke Speller, a senior scientist at the research division of BMT Group told the Beeb.

One they've detected a pollution source, the fish use artificial intelligence to hunt it down. They can also work in teams, communicating via acoustic signal.

At the moment Robo-fish needs to be recharged every eight hours, but future prototypes could last longer.

Lets' just hope future versions don't turn into to a bad sci-fi mash up of Jaws and the Terminator. Otherwise researchers might need to get a much bigger boat!

Apple fan boys are typically very attached to their technology, but some take that a little too far as in the case of David Hurban in the US.

Anxious that he should never be far from his iPod nano, he went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that he kept his Apple music player close.

Hurban claims to be the first in the world to implant four titanium studs into his left wrist and attached four magnets onto the back of his iPod nano to secure the device to his arm.

"It's way simpler than you think it is," said Hurban, who posted his "How To" video on YouTube, where it has been viewed nearly 900,000 times in two weeks, according to reports.

So if you are an Apple fan boy and you want to keep your iWhatever close, you know what you have got to do...

With smartphones, tablets, laptops, smart TVs and even cookers linking up to the internet at home, Wi-Fi is a must for most families. Yet, security specialists are always warning us how vulnerable we are if we don't protect our networks from the outside world.

The answer to our security prayer has surfaced - Changing Rooms style.

Scientists from the Institut Polytechnique Grenoble and the Centre Technique du Papier have invented what they claim to be 'anti-Wi-Fi wallpaper' to keep your network within your four walls and keep naughty passers-by from trying to steal your connection.

The design has specifically placed silver crystals built into the paper to block the signal. However, the inventors claim it still allows for mobile signals to pass through, so you can make calls from your Wi-Fi safe haven.

"Better than sex," is a common [in more senses than one] way of expressing how good something is.

While Facebook does not quite qualify, posting on social networking sites does rank alongside sex and food in terms of pleasure, according to reports on a study by researchers at Harvard University.

The study by two neuroscientists concluded that "self disclosure" produces a response in the region of the brain associated with dopamine, a chemical associated with pleasure.

They say "that humans so willingly self-disclose because doing so represents an event with intrinsic value, in the same way as with primary rewards such as food and sex."

While most of us devote 30% to 40% of our speech to informing others about our own subjective experiences, on social media this is closer to 80%, the study found.

Downtime is pleased to finally have a plausible explanation for why so many people spend so much time updating their status: they like taking about themselves.

InfoSec is still fresh in our minds, but it seems some people aren't as security conscious as others.

We stumbled across this picture on Matthew Pascucci's blog...

At first glance, it may appear as your usual baseball coach dissecting the game his team have just played and, judging by his face, lost.

However, look a bit closer, specifically at the back wall. There it is, plain for all to see, the so-called secure Wi-Fi IDs and the passwords.

Even hackers would laugh at this as being too easy. Think before you film guys!

To me that sounds quite high, the fact that more than one in ten is liking things on Facebook during the procreation of a sibling seems dangerous.

What could be so important that you need to do it while you're doing it?

Texting a friend?

Lol, that is so ionfvoei'[pfv#f[efewf[ewi[orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Tweeting?

@ashtonkutcher I find that wfm]ejbheiioms'liouefjwoaklllllvoioio!!!Mpoi[ose

Or maybe taking a picture/recording? 

Who knows, but if you're a mother please refrain from such activities! You are in danger of the following:

1. Tagging the wrong name on a picture in Facebook
2. Texting the wrong person
3. Tweeting up to the 140 character limit
4. And finally two words: sticky screen

Let this be a warning to you, multitasking is a gift to women don't abuse it.

With 500 "influencers" in Shanghai this week you'd think HP would be able to get its tech working. The company that claims it is the world's largest hardware company failed to wire-up a Wi-Fi network.

With presentations being translated live via wireless headsets, it was only a matter of time before the company's wireless gremlins struck again. This time, the influencers could clearly hear the presenter. The only thing was that it was a presenter from a different stream.

It's no wonder CEO Meg Whitman is spending a tonne of the company's money on R&D over the next three years. How can HP ever hope to be a network giant if it can't even get 500 people simultaneously connected to a WiFi network...

Around one year ago, police interviewed Maqsood Lodin as he travelled to Pakistan, during 'questioning' also known as 'interrogation' aka 'torture' the police found a memory card next to his privates in his Y fronts.

The police initally only found two pornographic films called 'Kick Ass' (one can only imagine it to be a bondage style video where women beat the behinds of elderly men in a gruelling yet provocative encounter) and 'Sexy Tanja' (I imagine it to be a video of a young nubile girl called Tanja who is exploring her sexuality on video).

After several weeks of supposed analysis, German investigators discovered more than 100 al Qaeda documents encoded inside the porn video. This included information on some of the terror group's future operations and PDF terrorist training manuals in German, English and Arabic.

Future attacks detailed in the documents included the plan to seize cruise ships and carrying out attacks in Europe similar to the gun attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. Lodin is now on trial in Berlin, where he's pleading not guilty to terrorism charges.

Keep this in mind for when authorities ask if anyone's tampered with your luggage.

With all sorts of stuff ending up on eBay that should not really be sold, including singer Cher's symbolic Key to the city of Adelaide in Australia, the case for eBay police is growing.

Head of administration at the House of Lords, however, has taken matters into his own hands, by rejecting calls to buy waders for members to use in the rain.

Lord Brabazon said House of Lords members would just have to cope with the puddles until the drought is over.

By way of explanation for his unwillingness to supply waders, Lord Brabazon said that branded House of Lords umbrellas would also be scrapped because they keep getting put up for sale on eBay.

Apple Mac owners tend to take this status very seriously. One only has to watch the reverence of a Mac "unboxing" on YouTube to understand that.

Such "unboxings" are usually accompanied by "oohs" and "aahs" about the smell of a brand new Apple product even before it released from its packaging.

Now, thanks to the entrepreneurial efforts of three artists in Australia, Apple fan boys may soon be able to make themselves smell just like a brand new Mac, according to reports.

Apparently, the trio in collaboration with a "scent solutions" firm Air Aroma, dispatched a brand new MacBook Pro to a French fragrance lab, where it was analysed until the perfect formula was found.

The result was "Stink Different", but Apple fan boys may have to wait a while before they can get their hands on some.

Personally, Downtime is in no hurry to go about evoking the smell of the plastic wrap,  printed ink on the cardboard, and a factory-fresh aluminum laptop.

Some may say that the customer service offered by banks, nowadays, is not as good as it could be, but the recent email Downtime received from Barclaycard just topped it.  Whilst scheduling time slots for exhibiters to contribute to a video interview at an upcoming technology security show, Barclaycard were contacted to ask if a spokesperson could participate. Barclaycard's Customer Service Advisor emailed back saying: "Please visit the nearest Barclays branch for the information."

I highly doubt the cashier at my local branch would have even heard of InfoSec, let alone be able to help me with a spokesperson that will be present on the day.