Downtime

By analysing 30 billion e-mails Microsoft found that the six degrees of separation myth is very nearly true, with it actually taking, on average, seven steps to link any two people.

This goes some way to explaining how the average social-networking-user boasts several hundreds friends online, whereas studies show that people have, on average, two close friends in the real world - not including Kevin Bacon, of course. 

A Spanish hacker has been jailed for accessing and misusing a former colleague's work e-mails detailing his sexual activities.

The hacker sent the e-mails onto the victim's ex-wife, along with his girlfriend and fellow workers.

The story will come as sobering news to anybody labouring under the illusion that e-mail is a secure form of communication.

Downtime rushed to delete all the salacious fan mail received over the years, but can only assume that a hacker has already stolen and deleted all such content.

Last week The Times reported that an expert was able to clone a new microchipped passport in "minutes", which would be "accepted by the computer software recommended for use at international airports".

The news will no doubt raise concerns over the government's £4bn ID card scheme, which will use similar technology. Downtime cannot help think there is better use for the cash.

By our calculations, with the same £4bn, the government could build seven millennium domes or fund another one and half Olympic games.

On second thoughts, it might be worth giving ID cards a try.

Disturbing news emerged last week when Dan Kaminsky found that hackers can redirect you from your intended website target, even if you type in the right address. This leaves Downtime doubting everything we have learnt from the internet.

For example, did England really lose to South Africa in cricket? Did Angie really get evicted from Big Brother? Did Dan Kaminsky really discover that hackers can redirect you from your intended website target, even if you type in the right address? We just don't know anymore.

The only Hollywood A-listers in Downtime's recalcitrant memory to produce twins, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both feature on another Top 10 list, that of Secure Computing's web threats report.

A spam message with "Angelina Jolie without clothes on"  was August's coy top spam message, the security company reported. Husband Brad came in at nine.

Incredibly, Barack Obama beat Paris Hilton, and Osama bin Laden was as popular as Brad in a spammer's headline. At least it shows that spammers keep up with the news, but Downtime reckons that Naked Britney Sex will still pull the crowds.

According to Directgov, the government's public information service (aka BigBruvGov), four in 10 Brits on holiday at home are likely to suffer "personal and health mishaps" worth bothering a GP or pharmacy.

Helpfully, BigBruvGov and NHS Choices are piloting a new mobile service in England to help in the crisis. You can now send a text to 64746 plus the code for the service you need, and directory services will send back the address of the nearest aid service.

Don't bother to watch the video BigBruvGov produced to help people use the service. The link it gives shows how to pay your road tax online.

Now that Downtime has exposed BigBruvGov's true motives, print this out and glue it to the back of your mobile phone.

 Text the following code to 64746:

* A&E - text "a&e"

* Dentist - text "dentist"

* GP - text "gp"

* Optician - text "optician"

* Pharmacy - text "pharmacy"

* Sexual health - text "sexual health"

* Alcohol support services - text "alcohol"

* Stop smoking - text "quit"

* Walk-in-centre - text "walk in"

The government plans to extend the law to require internet service providers to keep records of the public's e-mail and web use by March next year, it emerged yesterday.

Downtime is delighted that the government is at last going to snoop on all our internet activity as well as our post and phone calls. If the plods are going to read all the mail anyway, they have a wonderful opportunity to sort the spam from the beef. That would be a public service we could all support.

With job worries, fuel prices, green issues and other kill-joy news making travel companies such as Tui cut their holidays, online reservations firms are having to find alternative stock closer to home or go bust.

So cash-rich (are there any left?) time-poor consumers can now avail themselves of lastminute.com's fonefood, a mobile restaurant booking service now in beta. 

The blurb says fonefood allows mobile phone users to search and book tables in over 6,000 restaurants in 12 countries using the Livebookings Network. Confirmations are by return SMS.

Let the font wars begin... Follow the link below to watch the (rather widescreen) video:

Faced with customers staying away because of floods, the credit crunch, rising fuel and parking costs and supermarket competition, a midlands butcher has paddled and surfed its way out of trouble.

Clare Barry butchers, which has a worldly store in Evesham in Worcestershire, has literally taken its beef - and a whole lot of other farm-reared meats - online to combine the benefits of local butcher quality with supermarket convenience.

The "local" butcher now boasts more than 2,000 customers nationwide, which proves you can get everything on the web, including your pound of flesh.

There are many methods that IT firms use to capture new talent to fill the much-lamented skills gap, but inducing life-threatening strokes is not one of them.

But perhaps it should be, following news that a stroke left former engineer Ken Walters with hitherto untapped artistic abilities.

With his newly acquired talents, discovered while he recovered in hospital, Walters went on to develop his own software and sell his artistic creations before being hired by videogames giant EA to work on a new project. Walters regards the stroke as an unlikely piece of luck.

[Downtime's lawyers would like to state that inducing strokes is not a legitimate practice in IT recruitment.]

Downing Street's website has, since April, played host to a petition signed by 49,447 people for Jeremy Clarkson to be made prime minister.

Last week Downing Street posted a wry video reply to the petition showing Clarkson's face framed on an inner wall of number 10 amongst past leaders, with text reading, "We've thought long and hard about [making Clarkson prime minister]... but on second thoughts, maybe not."

Lighthearted tomfoolery, you might think. Well, apparently not.

An outraged signatory told the Daily Mail, "Do they seriously have nothing better to do with their time and my money? I signed in good faith that they take these things seriously."

In fairness to the signatory, Clarkson probably is more popular than Brown, but, crucially, Clarkson is not running for prime minister, and an online poll cannot, in itself, justify a change of government. Sometimes faith just isn't enough.

The Guardian last week highlighted the work of Matt Southall, whose website, ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com, collects the views of the most odious and self-important internet commentators. Here are two choice examples concerning road management and green policies:

"In towns with socialist councils, the traffic lights are timed to cause maximum possible disruption to car drivers, especially at peak times," rants SaxonHero.

"For god's sake would you kindly drop all this 'green' nonsense - it is all complete rubbish and I cannot believe that any educated adult can fall for such an obvious scam," asserts speaking_my_mind.

Illuminating stuff indeed. Downtime suspects there may be two more votes going Clarkson's way if Downing Street ever gets its act together and puts that poll to a vote

A Cambridge University study has uncovered bad news for the Adams and Alisons of this world. According to their research you are more likely to receive spam if your name, and by consequence your e-mail address, starts with a letter towards the beginning of the alphabet.

Richard Clayton, the security expert who ran the study, explained the trend by saying that spammers will often use a "dictionary" method of disseminating spam. This means they start at the beginning of the dictionary predicting e-mail addresses such as aaron.smith@hotmail.com and work up the alphabet from there.

By the time they reach Zach they may well have given up. It will be interesting to see whether these findings have any effect on naming trends amongst IT professionals. We could see whole generations of Zivs and Zondas steering IT through the 21st century.

Somebody who will be wincing at the previous story is West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin, who has hit the news with his proposals for "Web 2.0: The Movie".

To be precise, Sorkin intends to make a film recounting the creation and launch of Facebook.

Downtime has tried to become Facebook friends with Sorkin, so we can tell him that it is a terrible idea, and that nobody wants to watch a film about Facebook, but have yet to be welcomed into his confidence.

We can only hope that Sorkin's friends in the real world have more luck. 

Lloyds TSB changed the password of computer consultant Steve Jetley from Shrewsbury after he had logged it as "Lloyds is pants".

BBC News reported that the bank also stopped him changing his password to "Barclays is better". Apparently Jetley discovered that "Lloyds is pants" had been changed only when he tried to use the bank's telephone service and found his password had become "No it's not".

It is good to see that Lloyds TSB takes our password security so seriously. Perhaps Jetley should try "Leave my f**king password alone".

The internet is more popular among men because they are hard workers that need to be constantly connected, whereas women prefer shopping. Or, men are lazy and are actually surfing the X-rated sites while watching the score change at the cricket.

According to figures from the Office of National Statistics, a higher proportion of UK men use the internet than women. Downtime would like to see this broken down into what men and women are looking at and when they are doing itttttttttttt... "all out for 83, I can't believe it".

News last week that a computer virus has found its way to the International Space Station will surely make millions for Hollywood film producers.

Forget Kubrick's 2001 or the series of Alien movies that have graced the big screen, soon their will be a film going by the catchy name Gammima.AG.

The worm, which was first detected on earth a year ago, sits on computers and takes login names from users.

The virus got to the space station on laptops used by the astronauts. These laptops were used to run nutritional programs.

Downtime has a film idea.  A notorious hacker sitting in a high security prison is dragged from his cell and taken to the space station to save the world from the virus. His knowledge of hacking techniques is valuable in the race against time to stop the menus being tampered with putting at risk the health of the world's space elite and opening the human race up to extraterrestrial attack.

He save the day and is repatriated to his home nation, where he receives a knighthood and gets the girl.

Those who claim to see the future are often accorded high status in their communities, at least judging by the amount of money we are ready to throw at them. Whether the preferred methodology is extrapolation from the past, reading palms, counting crows on the wing, or picking over the entrails of a sacrificed goat, all require some observational acumen.

Which is why Downtime was surprised and delighted to receive from the IT industry's bone-thrower-in-chief, Gartner, the news that "enterprises must anticipate how societal trends will impact their business and customers". Slowness to respond could drive them out of business, it wailed.

It said websites and tools such as FriendFeed, Twitter, Ryze and Orkut "form an increasing proportion of the trusted information sources that individuals use to make decisions." So, not Gartner, then.