Cyber risk ‘equals 9/11 impact’

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There’s something very comforting when someone in authority starts to say what one has been saying for a while. This from BBC NEWS today…

The US homeland security chief has made a heartfelt plea to Silicon Valley workers to stand up and be counted in the fight to secure the cyber highway.

Michael Chertoff invoked the attacks of 9/11 as he sought to galvanise IT professionals and security experts.

He told the world’s biggest IT security conference that serious threats to cyberspace are on “a par this country tragically experienced on 9/11”.

Phorm tries a spot of creative editing

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From The Register…

Phorm has admitted that it deleted key factual parts of the Wikipedia article about the huge controversy fired by its advertising profiling deals with BT, Virgin Media and Carphone Warehouse.

The tracking and ad targeting firm said in an email: “We wanted to clarify a number of inaccuracies in the Wikipedia entry on Phorm.”

As we reported yesterday, a number of Phorm-friendly edits were made to the page on Friday. The revisions were quickly reverted by a Wikipedian who argued that they made Phorm out to be “awesome and perfect”.

In an Update, the Register reports a phone call from Phorm promising to behave more sensitively in future.

Dongles ‘R Us

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From The Register…

Maverick mobile operator 3 UK says it’s seen a 700 per cent increase in data traffic since it launched its price-busting dongle last October. Average data throughput on the network rose to 1,400 mbit/s by February, a steep ramp from 200mbit/s when the offer was introduced.

The dongle is available to pay-as-you-go customers for £70, with 1GB for a tenner, or 3GB for £15. T-Mobile and Vodafone have followed suit with aggressive dongle deals.

3’s UK CEO Kevin Russell said it had conjured half a million customers “from nowhere”, as he gave details of the networks roadmaps for higher higher 3G speeds, and how it will share infrastructure with T-Mobile.

But we weren’t alone in wondering the aspiration of becoming the king of mobile broadband was something to wish for. Data networks don’t make money – ask a British ISP – and the new investment in fibre is coming from taxpayers or is being cross-subsidised by TV. So what’s the masterplan?

Russell told us it was all about incremental margin. He didn’t think mobile broadband was going to display fixed broadband by 2012 – a figure we plucked out of the air – and preferred to see it as a new marketplace, rather than one of substitution.

“Data becomes valuable as a leverage into increased share of the handset business,” he said. “We have a different strategy from the other four operators.”

So, give away the data and make more on handsets. It seemed rude to point out that you can walk out of a 3 Store with a dongle, but no handset.

Another reporter asked the same question, phrased differently. Nobody makes money from data – “so isn’t your business model running on empty?”

Russell said he didn’t understand the question.

Personally, I don’t much care what 3’s business model is: my 3G USB dongle has already proved a Godsend — especially since Pipex and BT began to ‘regrade’ my DSL line, thereby making it chronically erratic.

Curiouser and curiouser…

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It’s strange what one finds on the Web. There’s a site called Stuff White People Like, which is so languidly smart that the author’s tongue occasionally protrudes through his ear. But apparently his performance has landed a dead-trees book deal. He describes himself thus: “I ride a bicycle in Los Angeles and keep one of the best NCAA blogs on the internet.” So now we know.

Er, what is the NCAA when it’s at home?

Is Gates losing the plot?

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Or just demob happy? How else can one interpret this BBC report?

Microsoft boss Bill Gates has dropped a hint about the next version of Windows.

He said Windows 7 could be released “sometime in the next year or so” during a Q&A session at a meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank.

After the event a Microsoft spokeswoman said the new version was scheduled for 2010 – three years after the January 2007 release of Vista for consumers….

Make that 2015 just to be sure.

The Office of … what?

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I’m attending a conference on social networking jointly organised by the Oxford Internet Institute and OFCOM. It’s being held in OFCOM’s splendid Thameside offices, which has a wireless network for guests. But guess what? It’s only accessible by people using Internet Explorer. So it’s closed to — for example — Firefox users.

What, you ask, does OFCOM stand for? Answer: it’s the ‘Office of Communications’.

Thank goodness for 3G modems.

Update: There’s someone here from Microsoft Research and he can’t get in — even with IE!