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By Graham Hayday, 16 November 2001 00:01

COMMENT So said Tory chief whip David Davies last week, explaining that heavy rainfall keeps crashing the Welsh National Assembly's IT system in that notoriously hurricane-prone city, Cardiff. As Davies went on to say to the embarrassed Welsh politicians: "Can you tell me how you expect business to have confidence in the Welsh Assembly if we cannot even have confidence to use our IT system when there's a spot of rain?" We've all heard of the 'dog eating homework' excuse, but rain shutting down a network? We know it gets slightly damp in Wales from time to time, but we're not talking floods or hurricanes here: it's just rain. Or maybe the truth is that the Welsh Assembly's computers keep crashing because they're jealous of the system they use in Scotland... (Thanks to John R Walker of AccData for sending us that news nugget). The Round-Up's not a big fan of those hilarious, 'novelty' mobile phone ring tones. So we're not entirely happy to learn that around one million people in the UK have changed their ring tone with the express purpose of annoying the other 59 million of us. According to a survey commissioned by Lycos.co.uk and conducted by e-MORI, this shows that (and we quote) "mobile phones are a source of amusement for many". Yes - and torture was a source of amusement for many an evil dictator, but that doesn't make it right, does it? One in 10 of us use a TV or movie theme on our mobiles; nine per cent have downloaded a recent chart hit, with seven per cent opting for a classical tune. Proving that we're a creative bunch, four per cent of the population have created our own ditties, according to the research. Alex Kovach, managing director of Lycos UK and Ireland, said: "People are keen to display their individuality and musical skills by creating their own ring tones. Who knows, we may even find that the next big chart hit is based on a ring tone, rather than a ring tone being based on a chart hit." You've obviously never heard any Aphex Twin then, Alex... In case you were wondering, the top 10 most popular ring tones on Lycos at the moment are: 1. Itchy & Scratchy
2. Follow Me (Uncle Kracker)
3. Smooth Criminal (Michael Jackson)
4. Heaven is a Halfpipe (OPM)
5. Mission Impossible
6. Angel (Shaggy)
7. Rocky Theme
8. Lady Marmalade (Christina Aguilera)
9. Don't Stop Moving (S Club 7)
10. Sh*t on You (Eminem) And now an anecdote from a reader called Paul. Paul applied for a car loan from Nationwide using its lovely website. It crashed a few times, but in the end he managed to complete all the forms and received a message thanking him for his application. Sadly, the message didn't say when a decision would be made, so the next day Paul rang Nationwide's helpdesk to find out. He was told there was a delay in processing applications. He asked why. The helpful person at the other end of the line said that there were lots of people off sick from Nationwide's internet arm, meaning that it might be several days before someone could print off his application and "key it into their system". As Paul says, welcome to the 21st century... It's been quite a week for FriendsReunited.co.uk. First, the good news. It entered the top 20 list of most-visited UK sites for the first time, with the number of people logging on increasing tenfold in five months. According to Jupiter MMXi, it attracted just over two million unique users in October, up from 191,000 in June. FriendsReunited is a veritable web phenomenon: the husband and wife team behind it have spent almost nothing on marketing, relying on at least three factors to ensure its popularity (as one of our leader writers mused this week), namely: 1. People want to find out whether friends they've lost contact with have done well for themselves
2. People want to find out whether their enemies have failed miserably
3. People want to make up for missed opportunities by getting back in touch with classmates they never got a chance to take behind the bike sheds Factor (3) shouldn't be underestimated. Either way, it's a fantastic application of the possibilities the internet now offers as a damn-nigh ubiquitous and truly interactive medium. But now the bad news. Some users of the service have posted nasty and allegedly untrue messages about their teachers, leading to complaints from teachers' unions, which have forced FriendsReunited to shut down its message board. This is sad on many levels. Firstly, it's sad that some people are undoubtedly abusing the system. Secondly, it's sad that this action was taken on the basis of 12 complaints. There were 512,000 messages there altogether. However, the company cannot be blamed for shutting the whole board down. It could well have been found liable for libel if it had continued to host the messages in question (although it could just have removed those that caused offence... but we're not talking a global multinational with endless resources here, so the site's owners should not be lambasted for this). And it's very sad that our story prompted one reader to post this comment on silicon.com: "Having been sexually abused by a teacher at a school in the early 1960s, my response to the teaching unions is along the lines of 'Thanks for closing ranks and calling me a liar when I tried to report it at the time'. I say let the reports go on - it may help to winkle out some of these paedophile perverts!" That view is more than slightly controversial, but this issue has reignited the free speech debate, and whether the owners of a non-moderated message board should be responsible for its content. Where do you stand? Why not join in the debate at the bottom of the article here: http://www.silicon.com/a49133 And finally (and on a lighter note), we've been trying to find the world's funniest IT joke (if that's not a contradiction in terms). Can you do better than these? Q: What do you get when you cross Henry Ford with Count Dracula?
A: autoexec.bat Once an IT manager drowned in the sea. Many marines were at that time on the beach, but the programmer was shouting "F1 F1" and nobody understood it. The Round-Up will be back next Friday...