From the You-couldn’t-make-it-up Department (via The Register)…

The Belfast Telegraph and Sinn Fein are leading a campaign to KO eBay auctions of DVD bare-knuckle gypsy-on-gypsy fight action. The newspaper has already provoked eBay.co.uk to pull two auctions for such material, although there is plenty of raw footage still available to eager punters.

The blurb for one of these sensitive productions reads

This is Real Bare Knuckle Gypsy Fights on DVD! Over two hours of Gypsys punching the hell out of each other and shouting stuff that you wont be able to understand! Filmed in England, Ireland and Scotland in country lanes, warehouses and front gardens! This is real footage all caught on camcorder, so dont expect hollywood quality. Just like the film Snatch, only this is for real!

A 100% Genuine Gypsy production comes on a disc like the one pictured below. No sleave [sic], bare disc of Bare Knuckle Fights!

The other interesting snippet from The Register report is the news that Sinn Fein has a “spokesperson on human rights”. Whatever next.

One of my kids is avidly reading Dan Brown’s best-selling book, and so we’ve been talking about it. The question of whether it had been turned into a movie came up, but none of us knew whether the film had actually been released or not. However, all were agreed that it was a certainty that Hollywood would do it.

Now comes an interesting article in today’s New York Times which sheds some light on the matter. It seems that Sony is making the film (directed by Ron Howard, who won an Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, and starring Tom Hanks), but a tight curtain of secrecy surrounds the project. Why?

Well, essentially because the central tenet of the book’s plot (which is is that Jesus had a child by Mary Magdalene and the Catholic Church has been ruthlessly trying to kill the story ever since) upsets certain powerful groups in US society. For example, the US catholic lobby and christian fundamentalists are very hostile to a movie which might lend credence to Mr Brown’s interesting conjecture. So Sony is wriggling on the horns of a dilemma. There are rumours of strong pressure on the film-makers to change the plot of the book (thereby, it seems to me, missing the entire point of the book).

Here’s how things stack up: on the one hand, there are all those Da Vinci Code fans out there (37 million copies sold, so far); on the other, all those devout Christian fanatics. Which way will Sony jump? Watch this space…

I’m not making this up. There is a web site called ThankYouTony.com. It was set up “to thank Prime Minister Tony Blair for his support of the American actions in Iraq”. The blurb reads:

Whereas, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, has vigorously supported the United States in the disarmament of Iraq;
Whereas, the United Kingdom is a strong and loyal ally to the United States;
Whereas, Prime Minister Tony Blair has committed substantial military forces of the United Kingdom to the current action in Iraq;
The American people extend their heartfelt thanks to Prime Minister Tony Blair for his courage and leadership; and
Extend their deep appreciation to the United Kingdom and the men and women of its armed forces.

Click Here to Thank Tony

And click here to throw up. Don’t you just love the ‘whereas’ stuff!

Er, I know that mapping services are the New Big Thing, but this is ridiculous. The Register is reporting that Microsoft’s Virtual Earth satellite imagery shows no buildings at the address of Apple’s HQ in Cupertino. In contrast, Google Maps shows Chateau iPod in all its glory. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that Apple now has 4.5% of the personal computer market.

From a report in Saturday’s Financial Times about forthcoming anti-terrorist legislation…

People going to overseas training camps or trying to find out how to build a bomb on the internet could be prosecuted under the legislation.

It will be interesting to see how they propose to do that. And what happens if, a year hence, I have a vague memory of seeing a report about this in a newspaper somewhere and type “how to build a bomb” into Google in an attempt to find the source? Should I expect a knock on the door from Inspector Knacker of the Yard?

Here’s a statistical freak. The chances of knowing anyone directly affected by the terrorist bombs must be vanishingly small. Yet I discovered on Thursday that a woman I know slightly from work had been on the tube train that had been bombed at Aldgate. (She suffered from smoke-inhalation, but is basically ok). Then I find that a friend of my son had been on the bus that was bombed in Tavistock Square, but had disembarked a few minutes earlier, having concluded that it would be quicker to walk. And now I discover that the sister of a colleague had been on the Aldgate train, and had stayed to help the wounded.

It’s almost enough to make one feel sorry for Windows users. MessageLabs is reporting that it has intercepted

copies of an email posing as a video news clip of yesterday’s terrorist attack in London which instead contains a Trojan designed to compromise the recipient’s computer. The email containing this Trojan has been crafted to appear as a CNN Newsletter which asks recipients to ‘See attachments for unique amateur video shots’.

When executed the attachment copies itself to %Windir%\winlog.exe and modifies the Windows registry key ‘HKLM/Software/microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run’ so that it runs automatically on system start-up. The Trojan then attempts to obtain a list of the SMTP servers that the victims machine is configured to use and starts to use these servers to send large volumes of unsolicited mail.

PartyGaming floated on the London Stock Exchange today.

PartyGaming’s shares rose 11% on the first day of dealings yesterday, defying doubters who thought it would be impossible to float a business in London whose activities are considered illegal in the US. Strong demand for shares in the world’s biggest online poker company meant the four founders sold extra into the flotation. The quartet of two Indian computer engineers plus an American former porn entrepreneur and her husband will now collect a combined £1bn in cash and retain stakes collectively worth £3.5bn.

PartyGaming peppered its float prospectus with warnings about the risk of criminal and civil proceedings in America, notably from the US Department of Justice, which regards gambling over the internet as illegal.

Funny how nobody in the City seems concerned about the ethics of this. I bet if I tried to float a company whose services were illegal in other jurisdictions I’d be condemned from a great height by men in suits from City institutions. (Unless, of course, it was making huge profits.)

Interesting fact no. 3443: the programmer who wrote the original software for PartyGaming is called Dikshit. He will collect £420m and keep a 30.4% stake worth £1.5bn.