Downtime

As if estate agents were not already well and truly up that proverbial creek without a paddle, the London Metropolitan Police has made their lives even tougher.

A website mapping crime has been launched which allows citizens to key in a postcode and get details of the crimes committed there.

Anybody who has ever shopped for property in London will know the well established euphemism "it is an up and coming area", which means "it is not currently a nice area", but estate agents will really have their verbal gymnastics tested when trying to cast high violent crime statistics in a positive light. 

Apparently, teachers do not think it is such a good idea to have Facebook and MySpace in the classroom.

In a study conducted by LM Research for ntl:Telewest, almost a quarter of teachers said they worried about the amount of personal information that students disclose online and their behaviour when using social networking sites.

 Downtime suspects it is not the kids' information they are worried about. Web pages never go away. The last thing a teacher wants is someone looking up their old MySpace/Facebook page... student parties, sex, drugs and roll 'n' roll.

PA Consulting hit the headlines when it lost an unencrypted memory stick containing the details of thousands of prolific offenders contained in the prison service's J-Track system, but that is not the only thing that has gone missing. It appears PA Consulting has "lost" some related content on its website.

A web search for articles about PA and J-Track lists a link to an article about PA joining forces with the Home Office, but surprise, surprise, the web page cannot be found. It has gone the same way as the notorious memory stick.

Unfortunately for PA Consulting, Google's memory is not so easily erased.

Police in Shanghai have announced plans to publish photographs and stills from CCTV of jaywalkers and other traffic nuisances in local newspapers in an effort to shame miscreants into mending their ways.

Local lawyers are proving to be unusually enthusiastic about the plan. They foresee lots of actions for defamation. They also think the loss of face from exposing the offenders is a punishment too cruel and unusual for the crime, meaning yet more money to line their coffers.

Downtime thinks that if the UK experience of CCTV is anything to go by, now could be the time to make a significant investment in a Chinese hoodie manufacturer. 

While the Cern laboratory is possibly better known for its imminent deployment of the Large Hadron Collider - and possible attendant apocalypse - it is also emerging as a crucible of musical talent for the YouTube-viewing hoi polloi.

Downtime first noticed the twin particles of pop and Big Bang physics with the advent of girl band Les Horribles Cernettes, a trio who used to rehearse in the office next to Tim Berners Lee.

Now following the doowoppers down the route from Cern scholarship to Web 2.0 music videos comes Kate McAlpine with 'the Large Hadron Rap'. A graduate of Michigan State University, Kate says she wants to explain scientific topics in a way that is relevant, interesting and understandable. A quick look at her nascent scientific career suggests she knows her onions, but in bringing the concepts of energy conservation, dark matter and the very birth of the universe itself to satisfy the average YouTube user, she might find she has her work cut out for her.

Downtime's ruthless critique of Microsoft's new Jerry Seinfeld-starring advertising collaboration, published last week, seems to have had more of an effect than even we expected.

It has emerged that Microsoft is pulling the plug on the series of adverts, though it sheepishly claims it was not intended to be a series.

Downtime is flattered that Microsoft takes our opinions so seriously, and can only hope its new series of adverts is equally appalling.

After all, we need something to write about.

Those of us who rely on Wikipedia as the ultimate adjudicator on any matter of disagreement had our beliefs shaken this week when it was revealed that Vernon Kay was not dead.

Vernon Kay's Wikipedia page had stated that Kay had died in a tragic yachting accident. Among the public outpouring of grief that followed was one dissenting voice. Rather importantly, that dissenting voice belonged to Vernon Kay.

Kay asserted that he was not dead and it became clear that the whole episode was merely a hoax. The rumours, as widely reported, coincided with Tim Berners Lee's highlighting the internet's capacity to spread inaccuracies.

Quite the PR coup for Berners Lee. Now Downtime is not going to suggest that Berners Lee's little piece of serendipity was anything other than luck, but it does make you think... 

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. 

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. 

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?

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.