By silicon.com, 30 November 2007 14:14
Life is full of little ironies and it's the teeny tiny ones that truly delight the Round-Up.
One little irony this week is that HMRC employees are apparently so stressed by the pressures on the department caused by the data loss blunder that they're demanding punch bags.
The irony is that it was an HMRC official, or a whole load of officials and their management and ministerial team - depending entirely who you believe - that was responsible for causing around 25 million people with kids in the UK to go a bit clammy last week. And, just for a change, it had nothing to do with chicken pox or mumps (or, thankfully, these little guys)
The row over the loss of two CDs containing the personal and, in some cases, banking details of around 25 million people to go AWOL in the post has shown few signs of abating.
The blunder has dominated headlines since the news broke and the revelations of operational incompetence and cost cutting measures have left senior ministers looking ashen-faced.
The latest development is that the value of the data on the black market is estimated to be an incredible £1.5bn - breaking down as £60 for each individual entry.
Perhaps acting Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, who mentioned the rather scary figure in the Commons, should have kept that little tidbit to himself. After all, its a bit of an incentive for anyone who finds the disks to turn to the dark side, rather than drop them in to the police. Actually, perhaps the Round-Up shouldnt have mentioned it either. Ho hum.
Back at HMRC and the civil servants are revolting. According to a story on the BBC, morale is so low that employees are demanding stress relief tools. They're after punch-bags, squeezy balls and aromatherapy sessions. And who said that civil servants are a pampered bunch?
A website called Disgruntled Lemmings set up by disgruntled HMRC workers contained a list of staff demands. The website has since been taken offline, presumably causing yet more stress.
However, the tech-savvy Tories, of all people, managed to get hold of a list of the demands through pages cached on Google. How times change.
Among the list was a demand for squeezy stress balls: "A cheap idea, these could be placed on every desk within easy reach for people to squeeze away the tension after dealing with an awkward caller or a difficult piece of post" - which presumably would be a jiffy bag that doesn't contain two CDs.
Other suggestions called for punch-bags: "A punch-bag could be kept in a staff room/chill-out area for those on breaks to take out their frustrations on."
Another poster suggested HMRC "could consider offering discounts for stress-relieving therapies such as Indian head massage, aromatherapy and reflexology". To go with their 30 days holiday a year and non-contributable pension schemes.
What does HMRC think of all this? A departmental spokesman told the Beeb: "It's not our website. I'm not going to comment on a non-HMRC website." Rather tetchily, the Round-Up likes to imagine.
Tory frontbencher Philip Hammond said there was now a "crisis of management and leadership" at HMRC. Rather unnecessarily the Round-Up thought. He may as well have stood up with a flourish and declared the sky blue for all the insight he brought to the debate.
In the meantime, kudos and a mention in next week's Round-Up goes to any reader who can make a comic sentence out of the following words: 'Gordon Brown', 'HMRC blunder', 'Tories', 'squeezy balls'...
The Round-Up would like to pass on its best wishes to fellow silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane who this week recorded his latest video blog entry from a hospital bed in Ipswich. Check out Peter's recent insights on how the teeny-tiniest of issues might mean big problems for both bodies and computer systems, here. Still, he could at least have put a shirt on...
Next up this week is Round-Up-regular Steve Jobs who has been voted the most powerful man in the galaxy, or something along those lines.
Fortune magazine has declared the Apple boss the most influential business person in the world for having "twice altered the direction of the computer industry". Not only that he appeared in the top two of silicon.com's Agenda Setters poll this year.
Apple's launch of the Apple II in 1977 "kicked off the PC era", wrote Fortune, which also paid tribute to Jobs achievements in pioneering the desktop publishing revolution as well as laser printers and personal computer networks.
They also mentioned iPods, iTunes and the iPhone, much to the inestimable relief of Apples marketing and PR legions.
In truth, it's been a heady year for the Apple boss, with the iPhone dominating the shiny products pouring out of Cupertino.
What's that? Missed the buzz on the iPhone? Not to worry, check out silicon.com's definitive coverage of the iPhone UK launch here.
Meanwhile, Apple's market cap eclipsed IBM's for the first time in its history last month. For those who recall the infamous 1984 ad for the Macintosh featuring IBM as Big Brother, it's a significant event.
Back to Fortune's Masters of the Universe top 25 and in second place is Rupert Murdoch. The media magnate grabbed the runner-up spot thanks in no small part to his acquisition of MySpace, the second best social networking site on the web.
Bill Gates came in seventh, perhaps mirroring his slow withdrawal from technology and into philanthropy. Adieu! Adieu!
Actually, techies litter the top 25, with the Google musketeers Brin, Page and Schmidt in joint fourth place. The Google boys were commended for "massively" disrupting the advertising industry, whatever that means.
They have also set their sights on "altering how mobile telephones work, fixing climate change, [and] utterly redefining the very nature of work".
Back again to Steve Jobs. Fortune is crediting the Apple chief with "upending" five different industries: personal technology, Hollywood, music, retailing and mobile phones. Not a bad 12 months, really.
Just don't ask where Ballmer placed...
Last weekend the Round-Up had a completely pants experience after it arrived home on Friday to find its house had been burgled.
Two computers, a camcorder and a passport gone. Adios identity.
For an anonymous columnist, the threat of identity fraud doesn't really bother the Round-Up. Well, it does a bit. Especially given HMRC's recent bumbling postal proclivities.
Anyway, to survive the Round-Up clearly needed to borrow a laptop. A friend obliged. And then the dawning realisation: other people's computers are weird. Almost like a different country.
For those of us who dwell in computer-land for the most of our working time, our personal setup is crucial to productivity: our positioning of shortcuts, desktop background, the choice of fonts and icon spacing have developed into a familiar little digital ecosystem.
Dont get the Round-Up started on the way the keys react to pressure from fingertips or the way they rattle, or having to revert to webmail rather than POP or IMAP for communication purposes.
Subtle alterations to nuances are bad enough, let alone - heaven help the Round-Up - a change of operating system. The Round-Up's laptop of choice was nicked and now lies in strange, rough hands. So it goes.
Yet the XP-driven Toshiba the Round-Up borrowed seemed to be in constant peril from attacks from the outside world and intermittently, from itself.
Going out on a limb the Round-Up imagines - and stresses the word 'imagines' - that this is what wife-swapping is like. Or husband-swapping, if you prefer.
The new stuff is all very exciting to start with, but the buttons dont work as you expect them to and it ends up as a let-down as both sides try to get on and finish the business at hand without too much attention or pride in the method.
The other thing about other people's computers is that they're filthy. Not in a wife/husband-swapping way - which some claim can be a beautiful experience - but in terms of the horrors that lie within the little crevices.
Turn your keyboard or laptop upside down and shake it vigorously.
Save your data first. Sorry.
What inevitably falls out of the little gaps between the keys is nothing less than the filth of human existence.
Office equipment harbours millions of germs - with telephones, keyboards and mice particularly fertile breeding grounds for unpleasantness.
Look: the Round-Up will be honest with you. If youre eating, you may want to skip the next two paragraphs.
The filthiest equipment is the hardware that gets handled most. Telephones are the worst offenders, holding up to 25,127 microbes per square inch, while computer keyboards, which are well placed to catch morsels of lunch, sneezes and dead skin and hair, can be germ-ridden to the tune of 3,295 microbes per square inch and mice can harbour up to 1,676. Still eating?
Meanwhile, enough dead skin falls off a human in a day to fill a teacup, according to the company that conducted the survey. An IT equipment cleaning company. Funny that, what point do you imagine they're tying to make?
Not only is this unpleasantness bad for us, it's bad for the hardware, too. This results in absenteeism and malfunctions, respectively. Boo!
So in summary: lock all your doors, shut all your windows, enclose yourself in a bubble, wear gloves and do not endanger yourself or your precious computers to threats from the big, bad outside world.
Do that and all your worries will wash away like the police's silvery fingerprint dust under a damp J-cloth...
A swift swoosh through the rest of the week's news and then it's time to bid farewell.
There's the filth and the fury of silicon.com readers on the whole HMRC row. If you havent already added a reader comment then youre probably in the minority.
And finally, photos of the month: floating computers, bizarre power sources, wacky races, the iPhone launch and a person standing in Regent Street in the cold. Very strange.
Until next week then Dont forget to check out the latest caption competition and give the Weekly Round-Up podcast a listen.
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