The Times: Tech column - EverQuest 'dangers'/Klez worm/Word secrets

By David Rowan

CAN playing a computer game kill you? Elizabeth Woolley believes that an addiction to a popular online game called EverQuest caused her 21-year-old son to take his life last November. So obsessed was Shawn Woolley with the role-playing game that he shot himself in his Wisconsin home after apparently playing for 12 hours a day. "It's like any other addiction," says Mrs Woolley, who wants EverQuest to carry a health warning. "Either you die, go insane or you quit. My son died."

Now, in a move that is stirring the online gaming world, Woolley plans legal action against the game's publisher, Sony Online Entertainment. Naturally enough, Sony denies that it is at fault: Shawn Woolley, after all, had a history of epilepsy and depression, and doctors had diagnosed mental illness. As one member of the "Green Knights" order of EverQuest players said this week: "It's a little like me walking along the street, while drinking a can of Coke, and tripping, and then suing Coca-Cola for not issuing a warning."

Yet the case has revived the debate about the social evils of computer games in particular, this hugely successful Dungeons & Dragons-style game reputedly so addictive that some players call it "EverCrack". There was a similar case in Florida last year when a baby died of neglect. His father, Tony Lamont Bragg, was allegedly so engrossed in his EverQuest sessions that he ignored the baby's screams (Bragg was sentenced to 15 years for aggravated manslaughter). Certainly the game is compulsive: of 2,300 players surveyed, two-thirds claimed that they were addicted. But can a game really be blamed for the problems of some of those who choose to play it?

As tempting as it is to demonise computer games for society's ills, the evidence does not suggest such a simple link. Yes, video games are overwhelmingly violent - so much so that that the Army uses them to train soldiers to kill without hesitation. But that does not necessarily imply that a balanced civilian will want to kill, even after a day at the keyboard. A recent Home Office study examined a decade of academic research into computer games and the young. For every study that showed children becoming aggressive after playing, another concluded that the practice had a calming effect. For each survey that raised worries about addictive behaviour, another concluded that obsessive players go on to prosper educationally and achieve better jobs.

With sympathy to Mrs Woolley, the truth is that some people go through life with particular problems - whether or not they choose to escape into a virtual fantasy world.

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IF YOU are among the thousands to have received the latest computer virus, have a heart: its creator was just trying to be a decent son. Variations of the "Klez" worm have been spreading from China by e-mail this week, with such subject lines as "Let's be friends" and "Some questions". But the writer is only trying to help - honest. "I'm sorry to do this," an embedded message states in sketchy English. "I want a good job. I must support my parents. Now you have seen my technical capabilities. How much my year-salary now? No more than $5,500. Can you help me?"

Nice try, fella, but next time take out a small ad.

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Here's a reminder for anyone who uses Microsoft Word - civil servants at the Inland Revenue, for instance - that Bill Gates's software can betray your true thoughts. Word, among its quirks, allows you to switch back to recently deleted versions of a document. That's all very useful, but probably not if that document is a carefully reworked press release designed to portray Gordon Brown's Budget in the best possible light. The mischievous Need to Know newsletter has discovered that the Word press release about the new North Sea oil tax, on the Revenue's website, underwent a last-minute revision. Brown originally sought to "ensure that the nation receives a fair share of the profits from the exploitation of the North Sea", but that, apparently, sounded a bit too socialist. So this was replaced with a far more expedient sentence about "the North Sea fiscal regime (not striking) the right balance between promoting investment and taking an adequate share of revenue". Remarkable.

(The Times, April 24 2002)

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Evening Standard: Profile of Melanie Cantor, celebrity PR

By David Rowan

IT was, as in every tortured romance, the Other Woman who emerged to complicate Sven-Goran Eriksson's love life this week. Tough, sassy, manipulative, she used her full persuasive powers to remind Sven that he steps out of line at his peril. Whatever his true feelings for Ulrika Jonsson, she made clear, he must now cooperate - or face the full force of her media revenge.

The woman's name? No, not Nancy Dell'Olio, the two-timed "Dark Lady" who shares Mr Eriksson's Regent's Park home, but Melanie Cantor, a television agent who has been the true force shaping the past week's scandalous headlines. You may be forgiven for not knowing Ms Cantor's name: after all, her role is to raise the profile of her clients, such as Jonsson, rather than her own. But as this week's headlines show, such behind-thescenes celebrity spinners are wielding ever-greater influence in Britain's newspapers.

When news of the affair broke in The Daily Mirror last Friday, it was Melanie Cantor who ensured Jonsson favourable coverage. The "Svensational" story - presented in the 3am Girls' celebrity-friendly spread on pages eight and nine - noted that "Ulrika has always stressed that her daughter and son Cameron, seven, are the most important things in her life". This "devoted mother" had put her flourishing TV career on hold while she nursed her sick baby, yet still "her career has gone from strength to strength".

As Mirror editor Piers Morgan, admitted this week, he approached Cantor to gain her co-operation with a story that was otherwise destined for the News of the World. "It's a pretty sensational piece of gossip and we'll treat it as such," he told her, "put it into our 3am slot and not make it out to be a big scandal."

Since then, Jonsson's "friends" - and Cantor herself - have been widely quoted portraying the presenter in a positive light. While Eriksson's press-handling is controlled rather defensively by Paul Newman, head of communications at the Football Association, Cantor has taken a far more proactive approach. As one former editor told the Standard: "Ulrika has come out the winner. She clearly didn't like being treated as just an afternoon kickabout by Sven, and wanted to put the pressure on. This has been absolutely planned to the minute as a calculated media campaign."

Cantor, whose clients also include Melinda Messenger and the astrologer Claire Petulengro, has a reputation among journalists as a ruthless operator. "She makes no bones about not liking journalists," says one. "There tends to be a huge groan when you're told that you have to go through her - she's almost impossible to deal with." A number of those we spoke to also suggested that the publicity might even be orchestrated as a means of boosting Jonsson's career and increasing her market value - and that of her book deal, which emerged last night.

Cantor denies this flatly. "That's a crazy idea," she told the Standard. "If this was a publicity stunt, it would be brilliant - but we're not dealing with lapdancers from Spearmint Rhino. I don't need to push anything - I'd much rather it hadn't come out." She is not surprisedby the extent of this week's coverage, which she defines as "a whole mishmash of nonsense peppered with elements of truth". But she is concerned at pressure being put on Jonsson, a personal friend.

"The press treats the story with a sense of detachment - it's purely words on the page for the public's entertainment. But behind the scenes there are real personal issues going on."

So, who is Melanie Cantor? A divorced mother of two teenage sons, aged 44, she lives in Belsize Park, having grown up in north London. She left Copthall School in Mill Hill in 1974 with nine O-levels and three A-levels, and took a bilingual English-French secretarial course at the City of London Polytechnic which led to some translating work in France. But it was after she took a secretarial job at the Daily Express that she developed a taste for the media.

She took various jobs as a PR assistant, most usefully with the publicist Peter Thompson, who set her on the road to celebrity PR.

Cantor went on to be launch press officer for TV-am from 1982 to 1984; later she set up her own PR firm, acting for clients including Michael Aspel and Lysette Anthony.

Her big break was a meeting with Ulrika Jonsson in 1991, at a time when she was working from home for an array of celebrities and magazines."I was recommended to her by a journalist friend who said she didn't just want a publicist, but somebody to do the whole bit for her - she wanted an agent," according to Cantor. "And so I agreed to meet up and see if we got on, and we did. I just thought to myself, I've got nothing to lose if she's ready to take the risk with me." This led to what she calls her "dream job" - apart, that is, from "having to be involved in other people's divorces".

FOUR years ago she set up Take Three Management with two other agents, Vicki McIvor and Sara Cameron, based in the celebrity enclave of Primrose Hill. Although clients have included Lynda Bellingham and Julia Carling, it is Jonsson who has taken up much of her professional time. It was Cantor who was there to brief the media on her daughter Bo's heart operations; and it was Cantor who, having introduced Jonsson to the millionaire Simon Astaire, had to tell the press when the relationship later failed.

Cantor's involvement with her clients goes far beyond professional detachment. Indeed, she has advised other agents to "take on people whom you really care about", which, in the case of Jonsson, has meant acting as godmother to Bo, and even sharing a cell with her in Brixton Prison (that, it should be said, was for a charity fundraiser). She has stuck loyally behind Jonsson even during the presenter's career lows: despite the critics' pasting of her 1997 show It's Ulrika, Cantor declared it "a major highlight because, for me, it really proved she was capable of doing what was above and beyond people's expectations".

For those journalists who have benefited from Cantor's dealmaking, her reputation for toughnessdoes not come as a problem.

Nic McCarthy, editor of OK!, has been talking to her most days this week, and says she has been discreet, although she has not denied the relationship: "She's very straightdealing, and never promises anything she can't deliver. She also knows how to have a good laugh."

Others are more reflective. One who has dealt with her since she represented Michael Aspel in the early 1990s calls her "clever, sassy, with an uncanny understanding of how the media works, and a good manipulator of the tabloids". The journalist adds that she is "a very good friend to all her clients, sometimes too friendly - she tends to get motivated by their wounded feelings rather than stepping right back".

But Cantor is not bothered what others think. "I'd hope that I'm tough," she says."That would mean I'm doing my job properly."

(Evening Standard, April 24 2002)

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The Observer: Investigating the illegal file-sharing boom

An investigation reveals the secret war being waged by the entertainment industry against web pirates who threaten its very future. By David Rowan

On the second floor of a nondescript office building in Victoria, central London, four young men tap intensely into keyboards as phrases such as 'Panic Room', 'Resident Evil' and 'Spiderman' flash up on their monitors. Hooked up to online file-swapping networks such as WinMX and Morpheus, they are searching for 'hot downloads', from films to computer games, that can be theirs free of charge at the click of a mouse.

But unlike the millions of internet users who exploit such networks each day to swap copyrighted material, Jimmy, Bill, Neil and Bruce are online detectives rather than pirates. From this office, among laptops and flashing network cables, they set powerful software agents crawling the net's murkier corners to detect, identify and remove files that should not be there.

Over 24 hours each day, their computers track the albums and movies that their rightful owners may have spent millions to create. For as illegal file-swapping becomes ever more popular, these technicians' customers - from Metallica to Michael Jackson - are finding that only constant vigilance can afford them any control over their work.

The record industry may have won a legal victory against Napster last July,but dozens of other file-swapping communities have emerged in its wake. The monitoring company that employs these investigators, NetPD, estimates that one such network, FastTrack-KaZaA, let people download 3.6 billion files during February alone, based on 4 billion separate search requests. And every day, another band, games developer or film director falls victim.

Newspapers began reviewing the new Oasis album last week as the record industry was lamenting the latest slump in music sales. And Oasis fans unwilling to wait for the July release of Heathen Chemistry found a far more immediate - and economical - way to enjoy tracks such as 'Songbird' and 'She Is Love'. By logging on to any of dozens of song-swapping web communities, they, and newspaper reviewers, could download pirated copies in less time than Liam Gallagher takes to sink another pint. No wonder the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry blamed internet piracy on Tuesday as it announced a worrying 5 per cent fall in global CD sales.

Two weeks ago a few fan sites began offering MP3 files of Oasis tracks apparently leaked when the album was being recorded. Then, as word spread, the album - which Sony says is not the final version - began circulating freely on file-swapping networks such as Morpheus and LimeWire. 'When someone has downloaded it they might make it available via file-sharing, and then someone else downloads it,' explained Jollyon Benn, investigating the leak for the British Phonographic Industry. 'It's gone from being a fairly small problem on Monday to being completely out of control by Friday.'

Just how out of control online file-swapping has become in recent months is revealed in an Observer investigation that shows how far the record, film and games industries are losing market share. The software that powers one such community, KaZaA, was downloaded 3.2 million times last week. As internet connections become faster and CD and DVD burners cheaper, it becomes ever easier for the amateur pirate to trade anything from a bootleg album to a high-quality Hollywood movie.

If you want to watch the film Blade II, for instance, you can now choose from around 125,000 people currently offering it as an internet download. Ali G's new film is available from 3,000 separate hosts. If you have a broadband internet connection, even a high-quality DVD file of around 650MB can be downloaded in a couple of hours, and then burned on to a disc.

That's why record and film companies are now rushing to encrypt their CDs and DVDs with copy protection software that limits where and how they may be played. In Washington, a Bill introduced by Senator Fritz Hollings seeks to go further and make it illegal to make or sell any device for record ing or playing digital content that does not reject unencrypted discs.

To discover the extent of the problem, The Observer asked NetPD to monitor the availability of current movies over a 24-hour period last week. If you wanted to watch Mission: Impossible II, there were at least 83,000 unauthorised copies to choose from. If you preferred The Scorpion King, you could pick any of 96,000 files. From Ocean's Eleven to The Lord of the Rings, almost all the big recent Hollywood hits are available to anyone equipped with a fast enough internet connection.

Over a four-week period, NetPD calculates that more than 28 million video files are exchanged through the major online net works. 'Film has become a real problem,' says Jim Stoddart, NetPD's chairman. 'Within the Gnutella community, requests for DVD files have recently overtaken those for music and even pornography. On Friday morning we found 65,613 people active in a small corner of the Gnutella network.'

Music remains the most commonly swapped format. On Friday it took The Observer a minute to locate and download Oasis's new single, 'The Hindu Times', using KaZaA, and a further 22 minutes to download the official video.

Using a machine that costs as little as £100, users can 'burn' - copy - audio or video files on to a blank disc. If the network involves no central computer - as is mostly the case nowadays - it is difficult for the lawyers representing the song's legal owners to find a target to shut down. 'You had a way to get at Napster because there was an entity to litigate against,' says Stoddart.

NetPD claims to have taken 52 million files offline last year, but that is the tip of the iceberg. In February, according to NetPD's investigations, the album Hybrid Theory by the band Linkin Park, was downloaded more than 5.3 million times. Hybrid Theory was the top selling album last year in the US, but what worries the record industry is that it sold only 4.8 million copies - the first time since 1966 that the national best-seller had sold fewer than 5 million.

Sarah Roberts, communications manager for the British Phonographic Industry, says: 'People think downloads don't do anyone any harm, but they forget that everyone from the session musicians to the producers get their income from music sales. If the record companies don't make a profit on the big-name artists, they cannot reinvest and sign new artists. There will simply be less music to buy.'

As broadband connections grow, the film industry is set to be the next victim. Ken Jacobsen, director of the Motion Picture Association's worldwide anti-piracy unit, says: 'There is a substantial problem with the offering of illegal downloads of our members' films, and we believe this problem will continue to grow.

'As broadband deploys around the globe, we expect film piracy on the internet will increase substantially.'

For online sleuths such as NetPD's team, that can only be good for business.

Top 10 downloaded movies

1 Black Hawk Down 169,000

2 The Fast and the Furious 168,000

3 The Lord of the Rings 165,000

4 Ocean's Eleven 154,000

5 Harry Potter 147,000

6 Monsters Inc 146,000

7 Collateral Damage 134,000

8 American Pie 2 126,000

9 A Beautiful Mind 125,000

10 Ali 100,000

Top 10 pirated albums downloaded last month

1 Linkin Park -Hybrid Theory 5,300,000

2 POD - Satellite 2,800,000

3 Creed - Weathered 2,600,000

4 Sum 41 - All Killer No Filler 2,500,000

5 Britney Spears - Britney 2,000,000

6 Nelly - Country Grammar 2,000,000

7 Nelly, et al - Training Day Soundtrack 1,800,000

8 Creed - Human Clay 1,600,000

9 Usher - 8701 1,500,000

10 Incubus - Make Yourself 1,500,000

(The Observer, April 21, 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Console price wars

By David Rowan

Microsoft shocked the world of computer gaming last night by dropping the price of its Xbox console just five weeks after its British launch. The price cut, from £300 to £199, followed concern among analysts about lower-than-expected sales only weeks before Nintendo launches its rival GameCube console, priced at about £150, on May 3.

Although Microsoft insisted that sales had been "in line with our expectations", speculation had been growing that the Xbox was failing to dent the dominance of Sony's PlayStation 2 (PS2) console, even after a £350 million marketing campaign. Sony cut the price of the PS2 by £70 last year to £199 as it fought to maintain its dominance of the multibillion-pound console market.

Sandy Duncan, Microsoft's European vice-president for the Xbox, insisted yesterday that the price cut was purely a pragmatic response to market conditions. "We mean business in Europe," he said. "We want to make sure that price is not the obstacle to the Xbox experience."

Chris Whitmore, an analyst with Deutsche Banc Alex Brown, said that Microsoft was unlikely to meet its sales target of 4.5 million to 6 million units in the year to June, after selling just 300,000 in North America in the first quarter of this year. Mike Wallace, an analyst at UBS Warburg, said that the Xbox was too expensive.

The new price will be charged from April 26. Consumers who have already paid the higher price will be "rewarded" with a free Xbox control unit and two free games, such as Halo or Rallisport Challenge, worth £115, if they contact Microsoft through its website before July 1.

(The Times, April 19 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Evil adware/Talking washing machine/Long bets

By David Rowan

THIS is the extraordinary story of how millions of computer users have unwittingly ceded control of their PCs to an American advertising company that plans to sell its computing power, disk space and bandwidth on the open market. Let it be a lesson to anyone who downloads software from the Internet without studying the small print.

One program, called KaZaA, has proved such an effective successor to Napster that it has been downloaded more than 20 million times since February - almost 3 million in the past week alone. KaZaA's popularity is well deserved: it lets you share music, video and picture files and, best of all, it is free. Typically such programs come bundled with software that shows you adverts when you are online. KaZaA has gone one step further. It is also bundling a program called Altnet SecureInstall that, it emerged last week, can turn any PC hosting it into part of a completely unrelated peer-to-peer network controlled by its parent company.

According to the small print, by downloading KaZaA you give up "the right to access and use the unused computing power and storage space on your computer and/or Internet access or bandwidth for the aggregation of content and use in distributed computing". This means that Altnet SecureInstall can use your machine to serve ads or content to other computers along the network. The advertising company that owns Brilliant Digital Entertainment, said last week that it would "turn on" affected PCs within the next two months. This news has not gone down well among the Internet community, not least among university IT departments, which fear that student downloads of KaZaA could end up blocking their networks' bandwidth with adverts. The company says that it will seek permission before using the computers and that their owners may be rewarded with vouchers. But with millions of privately owned PCs potentially at its service, Brilliant hopes that this commercial form of "distributed computing" will prove lucrative.

Opinion on the talk boards is less favourable, with comparisons being made to the malicious "trojans" that virus-writers hide within seemingly innocuous files. The program is also generating a new lexicon: Brilliant's software is being called "crapware", "parasiteware" and "hijackware". And such intrusive programs are absolutely legal - so think twice before you next download software.

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NEVER mind the digital revolution, technology geniuses at Electrolux have finally invented the world's first talking washing machine. They are most excited about their new "Washy Talky" model, which goes on sale this month in India. No wonder: its "warm, female, middle-class accent" can say such things as "Drop detergent, close lid and relax"; and, if you have not been listening, a more firm "Please close the lid".

It works, apparently, using an Interactive Voice Response System and features a Digital Load Imbalance Detector alongside a Fuzzy Logic Microcomputer. Whew. Such a rabid combination of jargon and superfluous novelty features can mean only one thing: after last year's redundancies and profit slump, the company is trying to reinvent its image as cutting-edge.

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All too often tech PRs and scientists make outlandish predictions that make headlines but little else. Now an online forum, www.longbets.org, hopes to force dreamers to back their claims with cash using that most fashionable Internet activity, the online bet. If someone makes a brash prediction, someone else can bet them that they are wrong. They have to commit real money, which is invested.

If or when they are proved right, they can claim their winnings for charity. Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief techie, has bet Eric Schmidt, of Google, $2,000 that "by 2030, commercial passengers will routinely fly in pilotless planes". Tech investor Esther Dyson has bet Bill Campbell, of the software firm Intuit, $10,000 that, by 2012, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times will have called Russia "the world leader in software development". And Jason Epstein, the former Random House boss, has bet the Internet pioneer Vint Cerf that, within eight years, more than half of all books sold will be printed on demand in the shop.

(The Times, April 19 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - South Korea's advantage

When it comes to living in the Internet fast lane, South Korea leads the way, says David Rowan

There is a certain football event coming to South Korea this summer that you may have heard about. British football fans can only envy the South Korean Government's determination to show the world what it is capable of.

It recently said it was building large-capacity telecom and broadcasting networks at six stadiums hosting the World Cup, where broadband Internet connections will be as fast as 45mbps (megabits per second). That's more than 800 times faster than a standard 56kbps modem connection. In this contest, the Koreans have truly emerged as a world-class team. Unlike Britain, which has been slow to discover the benefits of broadband, South Korea has been living in the fast lane for years. The popularity and smooth rolling-out of its broadband infrastructure shows what is possible when a government takes the lead. South Korea, with the world's highest penetration of fast Net connections, can justifiably claim to be the first truly "broadband society".

Last June the country already had 14 per cent of its population wired up to broadband, compared with 6 per cent for Canada, 5 per cent for Sweden and 3 per cent for the US, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For the UK, the figure was an embarrassing 0.28 per cent. Today, broadband is available to more than 95 per cent of South Koreans compared with two-thirds of the UK.

No wonder Patricia Hewitt, the Trade and Industry Secretary, has suggested that Britain should follow Seoul's lead. But Ms Hewitt knows her Government is unlikely to provide the same level of financial commitment as the South Korean administration.

Under a ten-year-plan, President Kim Dae-Jung's Government committed itself to spending around £20 billion on rebuilding the country's IT infrastructure by 2005. More importantly, it liberalised the communications market so that state-run Korea Telecom competes with private companies such as Hanaro Telecom and Thrunet on terms so fair they would terrify BT's management.

The competing companies also realised that the technology would not take off unless people who understood it were available to assist the public. So Korea Telecom, for instance, built up a team of 2,500 highly-trained technicians to install the service for consumers around the country.

The Seoul Government has set itself ambitious targets. The Ministry of Information and Communication's publication, A Basic Plan For Upgrading the Ultra High Speed Information Network, aims to have 84 per cent of the country accessing the Net at a remarkably fast 20mbps by 2005.

The Government has started rating new apartment buildings according to the speed and quality of their network connections, allowing developers to charge more for those meeting the highest standards. It has even invested more than £300 million to produce content.

Shin Yun-Sik, president of Hanaro Telecom, gives a number of reasons why South Korea led the broadband world just three years into its investment programme.

First, he cites the low subscription fees, now below £16 a month for the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) service. The country's huge network of Internet cafes has also served as a great sampling opportunity.

"Young people were able to get their first taste of the speed of the broadband Internet through a wide range of multimedia games," he says. As well as online games, video chats and video-on-demand have proved popular. A national mania for online stock trading and shopping was a further reason for households to subscribe.

South Korea's concentrated distribution of homes - with more than two-thirds of the population living in the seven biggest cities - made it commercially attractive for phone companies to build the networks, especially when they could connect entire densely packed apartment complexes at the same time.

So what can we expect when, and if, broadband penetration in Britain ever approaches that of the Koreans?

The killer applications, it seems, include online gaming, TV and multimedia messaging. Korean teenagers are obsessed with sending picture messages to each other, often dressing up online doll-like icons known as "abata" to express their current state of mind. Women, in particular, are proving keen online shoppers, with almost 2,000 online shopping malls competing for millions of pounds each day.

(The Times, April 12 2002)

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The Times: Tech special - The security perils of 'always on' broadband

High-speed, always-on Internet access makes you far more likely to be targeted by a malicious hacker or cybercriminal. Unless you practise the highest levels of security awareness, your broadband connection could allow an intruder to steal your documents, monitor your communications and use your computer to launch hostile attacks on third parties. By David Rowan

The risks are far greater than with dial-up Internet connections. When you use a standard 56k modem to go online, your service provider will temporarily assign your computer an identifying number called an Internet Protocol (IP) address. This address will normally change each time you dial in, which makes it hard for a hacker to identify your individual machine.

But with cable or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) broadband connections, some service providers will assign you a fixed IP address. This helps a hacker locate your individual machine. For this reason, many ISPs have now chosen to assign "dynamic" rather than fixed IP addresses to broadband users.

More importantly, the fact that your PC is likely to be online for long periods makes it a target for hours, if not days, at a time. Your computer could be used for a range of nefarious purposes: a hacker could install a program that could then be used to attack other machines; your e-mail account could be used to send unsolicited bulk mail; or your hard disk could be used to store pornographic or other illegal or unwanted files.

A hacker can easily scan an entire region looking for Internet-connected computers, which can then be probed for security weaknesses. The risks include "trojans", programs that arrive unannounced in your computer, often within unrelated files, and can affect its performance by altering its settings or infecting it with a virus. Up-to-date virus-protection software should alert you to their presence.

Your computer might also be accessed remotely to launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on other computers without your knowledge, or to paralyse its own processing powers. Microsoft Windows-based computers are particularly vulnerable to such security weaknesses.

Cable modems can increase the risks because connections within a neighbourhood are routed through a central node. In the early days of cable, this allowed individual users to access files on their neighbours' computers through a vulnerability in Windows software. The cable companies say they have now solved this problem.

Never forget that you are a target for hackers as long as you are online. Before installing a broadband connection, you should take some basic security precautions.

If you are working from home, ask your company's IT department to check that your system is securely set up - especially if you are connected to your office as part of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). At the very least, you should install anti-virus software such as McAfee VirusScan or Norton Anti-Virus, and apply whatever security "patches" are released from time to time for the programs that you run.

You should also install a personal firewall program: these are sold by all the main security companies for around £30 or £40. Internet-security companies are now also selling various "sniffer boxes" - such as the Gatelock from Trend Micro - that sit between your computer and your network link and alert you to attempted breaches.

There are also free programs available on the Web - one is called Shields UP! - that will check the security of your computer's Internet connection.

Never open an e-mail attachment unless you are confident about its source - and even then, check that it is something that you are expecting. Be especially aware of accepting files whose names end with .vbs or .exe, which means that they can execute commands on your computer. Do not drop your guard even if you recognise the sender's name: many viruses, such as the notorious Melissa virus, propagate themselves by sending themselves through every address in an e-mail contact book. And never download software from the Internet without satisfying yourself that it is from a reputable source.

Use passwords that are difficult to guess - combine upper- and lower-case letters and numbers, for instance, rather than use common nicknames or pets' names. If you are working from a single Windows computer or Mac, turn off the file-sharing and print-sharing options. This will limit the access outsiders have to your personal files.

You should try to back up your data as often as you can in case you lose it or need to reconfigure your system. And turn off your computer, or disconnect its network cable, if you are not planning to go online in the near future.

It may dilute the benefits of broadband's "always on" capabilities, but it will make you one less target for the malicious hacker.

(The Times, April 12 2002)

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The Times: Tech special - What you need to know about broadband

A high-speed connection in your home gives you 'always-on', instant access to the Internet for a flat fee. So why are less than one per cent of us connected? David Rowan untangles broadband

This, it is being said, will be the year of broadband, the high-speed Internet connection that makes online life a far more attractive proposition. Amid predictions that the number of broadband households in the UK will treble in 2002, costs are falling and take-up is gradually rising. So how excited should you get about what is effectively a more efficient way of carrying data than the standard phone line?

If you have spent much time online you will have experienced the frustrations of slow-loading Web pages and files which take forever to download. Those used to broadband connections, which are typically ten times faster than a standard line, tend to say they can never go back.

With a fast, "always-on" connection, at a single fixed monthly fee, you can use your computer to watch video clips of news and sport, call up television shows on demand, learn interactively, conduct video conferences, consult multimedia encyclopaedias, make cheap long-distance telephone calls, share music files, listen to radio stations around the world and play online games. Because you are always connected, you know the moment an e-mail arrives, think nothing of booking tickets, and can look up information online as easily as in a book.

Why, then, don't more of us subscribe to broadband connections? Across Europe barely 4 per cent of households are signed up, typically those comprising well-off young men who enjoy gambling and sharing music files. The Scandinavian countries are leading the way, followed by Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, but Britain is lagging behind at below 1 per cent. By contrast, 13 per cent of US households had broadband connections by the start of the year.

There are three reasons for the poor take-up in the UK. First, it has been something of an expensive luxury, typically costing £40 a month as well as a few hundred £to connect. Secondly, the service has not been available in many areas where people wanted it. Thirdly, people are still not convinced that they need it.

Things are changing, however. Prices are falling: recent price cuts led by BT this spring have brought down monthly fees to around £30. As a result, up to 10,000 people a week are subscribing to BT's new broadband consumer service, which can be easily installed without an engineer.

The cable companies NTL and Telewest, which together deliver broadband to around 200,000 homes, are also fighting to build a bigger market, with services available for around £25 a month. Surveys suggest that take-up will grow significantly only when the price falls below £20.

Availability remains a problem. Cable reaches barely a quarter of the country; BT's alternative system, known as Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), is available on just over two-thirds of phone lines. Smaller companies have criticised BT for making it difficult for them to access the exchanges they need to offer local services. The telecoms regulator Ofcom expected a process called "local loop unbundling" to solve this problem, but results have been limited.

There are alternative broadband technologies, such as satellite broadband, but these tend to be expensive and are not aimed at the mass market. Still, once you experience the benefits of broadband over standard "narrowband" connections, you will understand why it has so many converts.

(The Times, April 12 2002)

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The Times: Tech special - Get serious about computer games

It's an industry that makes more money than Hollywood, drives the development of your PC and pervades popular culture. Computer gaming isn't for kids any more. By David Rowan

Last year we spent more on computer games than on going to the cinema or renting videos. Gaming has become so huge - worth £1.6 billion in this country alone, according to the European Leisure Software Publishers Association, and employing 100,000 people - that soon it could even merit a minister. The Minister for Mario? Now that would be a fun job.

You need not have held a joystick to see how influential computer games have become. From Hollywood to children's comics, games characters such as Lara Croft or Mario are now huge intellectual properties, selling 51 million items of games hardware and software in Britain last year - a long way from Pong, the annoying arcade game that helped launch the market 30 years ago.

High-quality games have been key factors in the development of the personal computer, not least through ever-more realistic graphics and the establishment of the CD-Rom as the dominant medium for storing software. Investment in computer-games development has been encouraged by the open non-proprietary nature of the PC platform - anyone can put a new product on this market, and if good (and well-marketed) it has a chance of succeeding. By the mid-1990s, the PC was the main games platform.

At the same time, a parallel video-games market was evolving, based on systems from companies such as Nintendo and Sega. The success of Sega's Saturn, launched in 1994, and Nintendo's N64, launched two years later, encouraged games publishers and developers to work closely with console makers. The mid-1990s Nintendo/Sega rivalry was as bitter as any war game - a battle that further drove sales. Then Sony entered the market with PlayStation. Offering high performance and excellent games, Sony soon took the lead.

The games market has moved in cycles: normally three or four years of growth, prompted by technological advances, followed by a couple of years of stagnation. Today we are at the start of what analysts expect to be another growth period. This is prompted by competition between Microsoft's Xbox, Sony's PlayStation2, and Nintendo's GameCube. Huge sums have been invested in these "new-generation" systems: Microsoft claims to have spent more than £350 million on marketing the Xbox. Each rival system has prompted a rush to produce games that manufacturers hope will be the "killer application" that sells consoles. This requires specially trained teams of designers, 3D modellers, animators and programmers.

Unlike earlier consoles, the latest models are not merely for games, but are being tipped as potential "home-entertainment gateways" that could evolve into the long-predicted all-in-one audiovisual leisure units.

Both the Xbox and the PlayStation2 let you watch DVD movies; with a suitable connection, you can also play games online. Indeed, part of the current take up of broadband Internet access is being driven by games players who want to play over long distances. It is no surprise, then, that the average age of game players has increased in the past decade. These high-calibre machines are anything but children's toys.

Yet the gaming culture has never really had a good press. The mainstream media have tended to see games as a fringe obsession linked to addiction or violence. Only last month, an American judge dismissed a lawsuit against several video game makers for allegedly helping to prompt the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Meanwhile, academic studies point out that games provide poor role models for women. The medical profession, in turn, has its own worries about the dangers of excessive use.

Still, the future is rosy, at least in the short term. As well as consoles and computer games, there is healthy growth in mobile gaming, interactive television gaming and networked gaming. The Internet offers new ways to distribute games and allow players to pay as they use them. It is a lucrative, creative business and one in which British companies excel.

(The Times, April 11 2002)

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The Times: Tech special - The rise of the PDA

Today's electronic organisers have far more in common with a laptop than a diary. David Rowan examines why so many of us are turning to pocket computers

THE rise of the pocket computer, or PDA - short for personal digital assistant - began in 1984 when the chunky Psion 1 challenged the Filofax as a convenient way to carry a combined diary and contacts book.

It was heavy and slow, however, and it took another decade - with the arrival in 1993 of Apple Computer's Newton MessagePad - for the personal electronic organiser to find its own market. That market exploded in 1996 when a Californian firm called Palm Computing released the elegant pocket-sized PalmPilot. For the first time, a mobile computer really could fit into the palm of the hand. Since then more than 20 million Palm-based devices have been sold worldwide, with more than 13,000 dedicated software applications offering everything from games to financial spreadsheets and sports scores.

But Palm is not the only player in this field: for companies ranging from Microsoft to Compaq, handheld computers have become big business. Partly this is because they are cheaper and more convenient than desktop computers for many uses. It is also because, as wireless phone and Internet access becomes an integral part of the PDA, it really does deliver the mobile office.

Doctors store patients' medical records on them for use on ward rounds. Waitresses type orders into them directly to the kitchen. Travelling sales executives have them connected to the Internet to collect and send e-mails while on the road; and couriers rely on them to confirm deliveries and pick-ups.

As the computer converges with the Internet and the mobile phone, PDAs are emerging as the future of the mobile workplace. You can also use them to play music you have downloaded or to read an online magazine. Some models help drivers navigate using the global-positioning satellite network; others can be linked to a digital camera and display photographs.

One of the reasons for the PDA's success is the ease with which it can be synchronised with a desktop or laptop computer. You place it on a docking station, known as a cradle, or make a connection using a wireless network, a modem or infrared light. For as little as £100 you have a lightweight mini computer that can talk to your main home or office PC. For a fair amount more, you have an Internet terminal in your pocket (see buyers' guide, pages 4 and 5).

There are some downsides. You need to make sure everything is backed up on your home computer - a flat battery in your PDA can wipe out all your data in one go. Some are frustrated by the clumsy handwriting recognition software, small display screen and limited memory.

But, once hooked, you may wonder why anyone ever got excited over a simple Filofax.

(The Times, April 10 2002)

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The Times: Tech special - How Japan won the 3G race

Japan is way ahead of Europe in implementing third-generation technology, reports David Rowan

Japan can justifiably claim to be the birthplace of the third-generation mobile-phone network. Last October, after a six-month delay due to technical glitches, NTT DoCoMo launched the world's first commercial 3G service in parts of Tokyo and neighbouring areas. Early results suggest that the public is impressed.

Even before the 3G launch, NTT DoCoMo led the way in putting the Internet in people's hands. Since 1999, its i-mode phones have developed a huge following among Japanese of all ages, and by January more than 31 million consumers were using the handsets to play online games, exchange e-mails, swap pictures and access horoscopes. Rival services EZweb and J-Sky also had more than nine million users each, with entertainment services proving most popular.

The 3G phones go further, offering faster Internet access and streaming video, as well as greater voice clarity. Almost 150,000 volunteers wanted to participate in the current trial, although a scarcity of handsets meant just 3,330 were initially selected for what is known as Foma (Freedom Of Multimedia Access). Speeds can reach 384kbps, 40 times faster than conventional wireless data calls. Participants have been given the handsets free, but pay according to the amount of data they send and receive.

Since the launch, new applications have been rolled out gradually. Video-on-demand transmissions began last November and new handsets are being tested.

Expectations are high: the earlier i-mode phones are used for everything from paying for vending-machine drinks to listening to the latest pop songs. NTT DoCoMo generally receives a share of the call revenue.

This spring, the company is bringing its i-mode service to Europe, starting in Germany. Meanwhile, in Japan, the innovation continues. Last month it emerged that the company is starting to test a fourthgeneration phone network that could be in use by 2010. It claims that video pictures could be transmitted at twice the quality of a conventional television signal and data downloaded at 260 times the speed of today's 3G service.

As usual, the rest of the world will have to sit back and watch.

(The Times, April 9 2002)

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The Times: Tech special - The 3G battle for your phone

Third-generation mobiles promise a lot: high-speed Internet along with voice, text and video messaging. But do we want them, and will the technology ever get here? David Rowan reports

It is an inspiring vision: a mobile phone that not only gives you fast Internet access but, wherever you are in the world, acts as your guide, portable office, entertainment centre and personal shopper. One minute you could be videoconferencing with colleagues, the next downloading music or films and searching for the nearest cappuccino bar.

You can make voice calls at the local rate to friends on the other side of the world and e-mail photos or video clips to them. If you decide to join them, you can search the Web for the cheapest available flight and pay using your "electronic wallet". You might as well check the local weather while you are at it.

That, at least, is the promise of the newest mobile phone technology, which combines permanent network connections and fast data speeds to put the Internet firmly in your hand. It is known as the third generation of mobile telephony - 3G for short - because it follows today's secondgeneration digital voice networks and an intermediate stage known as 2.5G.

The third generation has taken a fair while to arrive - Japan has been the test-bed - but, within a year, 3G will start to reach Europe.

Once the promised life-changing applications arrive, 3G will come to dominate the way we live, according to research studies. The handset manufacturer Ericsson claims that, at some stage next year, there will be more mobile Internet users than fixed-line users. Analysys, a research company, predicts that within four years almost 500 million people will subscribe to 3G services and by 2010 more than a billion. According to Orange, by 2005 non-voice calls, such as video downloads, should account for a quarter of its revenue.

We have heard such optimistic predictions before, notably about the huge impact expected for Wireless Application Protocol (Wap) phones. In the event, Wap was an overhyped failure with slow connections and limited content. But the next-generation phones will offer genuine benefits. They ought to: the phone networks paid Gordon Brown £22 billion for the privilege of using the UK's radio spectrum - equivalent to almost £400 for everybody in the country.

Across Europe, 3G licences raised around £100 billion, with a similar sum needed to build the infrastructure. No wonder the highly indebted phone networks are determined to provide services we want to buy. We are bound to welcome innovations such as multimedia messaging - think of it as text-messaging with added photos or video clips - but the glorious new age will come with a price tag. It is too early to know how much we will have to spend, but handsets alone could cost a couple of hundred £initially.

Third-generation phones will be the most exciting advance in telecommunications for years. Just don't forget that there will be a price to pay.

(The Times, April 9 2002)

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Evening Standard: Pepsi vs Coke over Beckham

By David Rowan

DAVID BECKHAM is at the centre of a multimillion-pound marketing grudge match for the World Cup - England's captain is being used by both Pepsi and Coca-Cola to promote their drinks during this summer's tournament.

As well as the Pepsi cans he is paid £1 million to advertise, Beckham will also grace special World Cup bottles of Coke. It is the latest clash in the 100-year rivalry between the soft drinks giants.

Having sealed England's place in the finals with his injury-time goal against Greece, and with the nation's hopes of success mainly resting on his shoulders, Beckham's marketing value has soared and he can use his "image rights" to generate lucrative income. But his familiar face will make the battle of the fizzy drinks even fiercer.

Pepsi suspects foul play by its rival: "We're surprised they've put one of the world's most famous Pepsi drinkers on the neck of a Coke bottle," a spokesman said. "The Beckham household has had a relationship with Pepsi since we sponsored the Spice Girls in 1995, and they have had a Pepsi chiller unit in their house ever since.

"It is our belief that, as we go into the World Cup season, it will be clear to consumers which team David Beckham plays for."

A Coca-Cola spokeswoman was last night "not in a position to comment on the Pepsi issue", but said it was nothing new to be badmouthed by its competitor.

The firm insists its use of Beckham is justified as part of its broader sponsorship of England's World Cup team, which allows bottles to show groups of players."Each bottle doesn't just have one player," the Coke spokeswoman said.

"It just happens that, where Beckham is shown, he is the dominant figure who puts smaller teammates in the shade."

Oliver Butler, editor of newsletter Soccer Investor, stepped in as referee: "Coke's being cheeky - they were fully aware that he has a contract with Pepsi. But since he's the most famous player in the England squad, it's understandable." Beckham, meanwhile, aware of his delicate position, has let it be known "the only red in my life is my Manchester United shirt".

Coca-Cola has had an inside track to World Cup marketing since the Seventies. But Pepsi exploits a loophole by buying the rights to individual players. Coke, meanwhile, appears to have a loose interpretation of its agreement with the FA, which states at least three England players must be in a promotion, and no one should be prominent.

In fact, Beckham can be found on a series of corporate teamsheets: adidas (in a deal said to be worth up to £15 million over three years), Brylcreem, Police sunglasses, Marks and Spencer and Rage Software, which makes a David Beckham computer game. He can do this because of image rights - the right to license a person's physical appearance to promote a product.

More and more sports stars are finding it a highly profitable way to exploit their fame. Golfer Tiger Woods has a $100 million five-year deal with Nike. Beckham is currently trying to build a £1 million image rights component into his Manchester United contract. His agent is the tough SFX Sports Group, which has helped Michael Jordan make millions from endorsements.

And he stands to earn far more if he performs well in Korea and Japan this summer."Beckham should scrape into the tens of millions bracket over three or four years for image rights," said Andy Korman of law firm Hammond Suddards Edge, who has worked with Arsenal's Dennis Bergkamp and former England player David Platt. Luis Figo of Real Madrid has a deal giving him a 50-50 split on image rights with his team.

"But he's the best in the world," said Mr Korman."These deals can only work for players at the very top."

Players have long been aware of their image value. In 1970, Pele ensured a camera was pointing at him as he slowly tied up his Puma boots. In 1978 Mario Kempes, top scorer of World Cup winners Argentina, had a deal that gave him a bonus for goals celebrated in front of a Coke advert.

But Phil Smith of First Artist Corporation, representing Arsenal's Nwankwo Kanu and Chelsea's Celestine Babayaro, said: "Image rights are fashionable, but worthless in many cases: you need a popularity beyond football and the UK. Beckham has a fanbase way beyond Manchester United. Players face all sorts of extra demands: you've got to keep your form going, or you'll have the fans on your back."

Recent signings in the cola contest have pitted Pepsi's Madonna and Britney Spears against Christina Aguilera and Michael Jordan of Coca-Cola.

(Evening Standard, April 9 2002)

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The Times: Tech special - How the DVD changed our leisure habits

The digital versatile disc, or DVD, is the most popular piece of consumer technology since the mobile phone. David Rowan explains why

Every few years, a new technology comes along that revolutionises the way we enjoy home entertainment. Once the Bakelite wireless set entered the nation's sitting rooms, it was only a matter of time before the domestic parlour game died out. As soon as the video recorder arrived, the British family would never again accept a scheduler's view of what and when they should watch.

Today the DVD player is the device that is changing our leisure habits. By connecting a basic £100 machine to your television, you can turn the front room into your own mini-cinema. If you have a games console or a relatively new computer, you may not even need to buy additional hardware. For the film buff, the computer-game player and the serious music fan, the DVD format delivers digital entertainment at a greater quality and convenience than ever before.

According to the manufacturers, the DVD - short for digital video disc, and later digital versatile disc - is the fastest-growing consumer electronics technology of all time. As the price has come down and the amount of available content has multiplied, it has in the past few months overtaken the video as the most popular way of viewing films at home. It is not hard to see why: the discs, which resemble standard CDs, carry vast amounts of information that translates to a sublime viewing experience. And unlike video, they do not necessarily force you to buy a new machine: many new computers and games consoles are designed to play them.

Still, the machines are selling in extraordinary numbers. Last year, we bought around 2 million DVD players in the UK, more than twice the number for the previous year. In the US, the number sold doubled to 13 million. You can also record with the latest versions, which the specialist DVD magazines - there is already a shelf-full - are unfailingly generous in praising.

The story began back in 1994, just as the dominance of the compact disc was filling charity shops with yet more unwanted vinyl record collections. Hollywood set up a committee to study how entire movies could be squeezed on to a CD - ideally with extra background and interactive elements.

As usual, the big manufacturers failed to agree on a common format: not having learnt from the VHS vs Betamax battle, Philips and Sony chose something called the Multimedia CD, while Toshiba and Warner developed the Super Disc. Fortunately, within a year they had agreed on a common format known as DVD. The computer and games industries, then searching for better ways of storing large amounts of software, also embraced the technology.

The first DVD video players arrived in America in 1997, and a year later in Europe. Since then, rapidly growing demand has fuelled constant innovation.You can now buy recordable discs, rewritable discs, and audio discs in a variety of formats - and yet your existing CD collection will still work on the newest DVD players. Although, naturally, the latest DVD-audio discs will sound even better than last century's top-of-the-range CDs.

So why are people getting so excited? This comes down to the amount of digital data that can be hidden within the disc's bumps and grooves, typically 4.7Gb (gigabytes) on one side. A basic DVD holds around seven times as much information as a compact disc of the same dimensions; but if both sides are used and the recording track is doubled up, then there is enough room to store eight hours of the finest movie special effects. If you have ever sat waiting for an e-mail to download, you will understand that even a small document can take an age to arrive. So consider that an average Hollywood film would take at least a year, uncompressed, to download over a normal phone line. Now you can see why storage size matters.

There are still a few problems to resolve in the industry involving piracy and recordable formats (see Need to Know, below). But give them a chance: this market is barely four years old. And until something even better comes along, the DVD looks like being the future of home viewing.

(The Times, April 8 2002)

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Evening Standard: Celebrity backstage riders

The world's most demanding celebrity divas. By David Rowan

IT MUST be galling for an A-list Hollywood actor to see his latest co-star and New Best Friend universally mocked as a spoilt diva. After all, since they began filming the thriller Gigli late last year, Ben Affleck has become rather close to his leading lady, Jennifer Lopez, walking arm in arm on set with her while he whispered into her ear, as paparazzi photographs revealed in January.

So it was only natural that Affleck would want to tell the world how wrong we have all been about Ms Lopez's egomaniacal excesses. As he disclosed on American television this week, he, too, is ashamed to have had his initial suspicions about her. "I know I shouldn't have had those preconceptions," he confessed, "but I now realise how wrong I was." Still, he knew how to make amends. As he explained: "I thought I'd write a paragraph saying what a professional, decent person I think she is."

He then spent around $20,000 plastering that paragraph all over the movie trade papers Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In huge display advertisements headlined, simply, "Jennifer", Affleck wrote "with love, respect and gratitude" how proud he was that Lopez had picked up a recent award and what a "wonderful example" she had been to him. "You have shown kindness, dedication, diligence, humility, graciousness of spirit, beauty in courage, great empathy, astonishing talent, real poise and true grace," he gushed. "You are every inch the consummate professional. It has been nothing but an honour and a pleasure to work with you. I only wish I were lucky enough to be in all your movies."

At the risk of questioning the actor's judgment - he is, after all, in the fragile stages of alcoholism recovery - the Evening Standard feels it is its duty to remind Mr Affleck why Ms Lopez, set to make $12 million from this latest film, is known as Hollywood's greatest diva. As revealed in the contractual "riders" that must be agreed to before she will perform, J-Lo's backstage demands are greater than those of even Britney Spears and Mariah Carey - and she is leading a trend to ever more absurd requirements-"Nowadays what the studios are spending on a single star's demands could finance an entire movie," explains Steven Gaydos, executive editor of Variety. "One recent rider for a major male actor added $2 million to the cost of the movie.

That's not surprising, once you take in the private jet, fuel, landing fees, staff and security, in addition to the regular demands such as masseuse, trailer and so on."

There is no sign of the trend slowing, Gaydos says. "The demands have been getting more extreme ever since a vegetarian chef was required for Jim Carrey's iguana." Once a star is as big as Lopez, she can make up the demands as she goes along.

"It's like that joke, where does an 800lb gorilla sleep? Anywhere it wants," Gaydos reflects. "What does Jennifer Lopez get?
Anything she wants."

This, our guide to the world's most demanding prima donnas, is dedicated to Ben Affleck in the hope that he reconsiders before it is too late.

[PANEL]

The world's most demanding divas

JENNIFER LOPEZ

Only a world-class diva would get banned from The Ivy (for booking and unbooking tables three times and demanding a "security sweep"), disrupt the organisation of an 11 September fundraising record (she needed a 45ft trailer with a CD player and video, plus a white dressing-room with white roses and white curtains) and clog the Sanderson hotel's foyer on her last visit to London (must have been those 66 suitcases). Nor was the BBC prepared for her 90 staff before her appearances on Parkinson and Top of the Pops (not to mention the 10 dressing rooms). On film sets, she is even more demanding: the National Enquirer reported last year that her bodyguard must remain within four feet of her and call her "No 1". She also insists on being driven in a black Mercedes by a male driver, and issues "strict orders to cast and crew that 'No 1' is never to be looked at or spoken to directly".

BRITNEY SPEARS

Britney refused to greet fans in Leicester Square last month at the premiere of her film, Crossroads, and during her Top of the Pops appearance in January she forced BBC executives to move their cars, apparently to give her a shorter walk. But it's her tour requirements that show Britney at her most demanding. She requires in her dressing room: "two six-foot couches, two easy chairs, a clean and odour-free carpeted or rugged floor, a large coffee table, two floor lamps and four cushioned folding chairs." She needs her own phone line, but woe betide the promoter if anyone calls in by mistake: "any incoming calls will result in a $5,000 fine". In case Britney gets the munchies, she requires two boxes of Pop Tarts, a box of Captain Crunch and Fruit Loops, and a "bowl of fresh tuna salad, with Hellmann's mayo, eggs, relish and albacore tuna only!"

MARIAH CAREY

Mariah required a litter of puppies and kittens on set for an MTV appearance, and arrived for a GMTV interview with her own sofa. And just in case she gets thirsty when she's touring, her backstage demands leave no room for confusion: "Please note that 16oz plastic bottles of Evian are the only acceptable bottles of water for the dressing rooms," her contract states. She also requires a tea service for eight ("must use Poland Springs water"), a Honey Bear pack of honey, a box of bendy straws and two air purifiers. Then there are the meals: "Lunch will commence approximately five hours after load-in and should continue for four hours." It must consist of hot soup ("tomato, black bean, minestrone"), assorted salads, as well as several hot and cold dishes ("deli sandwiches, including wafer-thin honey-roasted turkey breast, hamburgers, French fries, chicken pot pies, ribs, etc"). And here's a coincidence: Mariah's tuna "must be albacore solid white in water". What a lot Mariah and Britney have in common.

PUFF DADDY (P DIDDY)

J-Lo's former beau, Sean "Puff Daddy" Coombs, clearly learned a few tricks from his ex. He expects at least 204 towels and 20 bars of soap in the tour dressing room, and he tells his backstage caterers that "all food and ice must be inspected for hair, package, paper, etc, and all catering staff must wear hair nets". If you really want to make him angry, let him see a bottle of juice rather than a carton - for Puff is, it seems, a prima donna when it comes to beverages. Here is what he likes to drink backstage: "1 gallon of milk; 1 gallon of fresh squeezed orange juice; 1 gallon of apple juice; 12 cases of Tropicana Twisters; 12 cases of spring water; 2 bottles of Hennessy cognac; 1 bottle Alize; 1 bottle of Cristal champagne; 1 bottle of Dom Perignon." And all "iced down for 20 minutes prior to serving" in a large, plastic-lined dustbin.

ELTON JOHN

Elton's 12-page backstage rider specifies his every preference, from the dressing-room flowers ("NO chrysanthemums, lilies, carnations or daisies") to the buffet table ("absolutely NO cold cuts"). Unlike Puff Daddy, Elton requires just 74 towels, but these are not, of course, to be used by the drivers of his two limousines, his luggage van or his laundry cars (all washing to be back by 5pm, naturally). But there's one thing he really hates: "Elton John is not accustomed to [staff] wearing their passes once they have arrived backstage. Security is to be briefed [as] to who these people are."

(Evening Standard, April 4 2002)

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The Times: The online hit parade of cringeworthy company songs

Think of it as Pop Idol for management consultants - a popularity contest for that most cringeworthy of corporate endeavours, the motivational company song. By David Rowan

Once merely the private embarrassment of firms such as McKinsey and KPMG, the rousing corporate anthem has emerged through the Internet as a cult musical genre with hundreds of thousands of devoted fans.

Now it has even gained its own official pop chart - with companies including IBM and Deutsche Bank fighting it out to win the popular vote for songs that really should have stayed in the boardroom. This week's chart-topper is McKC from McKinsey & Company, whose research division boasts in song that "challenges engage us, nothing really fazes us; come hell or high water, you can always count on us."

McKinsey narrowly beat the rival consultancy KPMG, whose in-house song Vision of Global Strategy suggests that No 2 is not good enough. "We will be number one, with effort and fun," the lyrics promise. "Together each of us will run for gold that shines like the sun in our eyes."

Such is the fan base around these anthems that KPMG's song has inspired jungle and heavy-rock tributes, as well as a Nokia phone ring-tone.

It is a "god-awful but heartfelt anthem", according to Chris Raettig, 23, a London-based web programmer who discovered the song. Since then he has turned what marketing departments defend as "aural branding" into an Internet phenomenon. Mr Raettig was working for a small technical consultancy firm early last year when a colleague e-mailed him a copy of the KPMG song. He decided to create a web page to chronicle other examples - "a compendium of corporate cringe" - that within a week had attracted 200,000 visitors. As anonymous whistleblowers continued to submit anthems, Mr Raettig's site collapsed under the weight of more than one million visitors, and he had to appoint a personal communications assistant to answer his e-mails.

The technology-news website ZDNet took over the project last week, and initiated a Top 20 according to the number of downloads for each anthem. ZDNet's Peter Judge believes that such song commissions represent corporate image manipulation at its worst.

"It's the same kind of thinking that leads to name changes such as Consignia," he said. "Above a certain level in any company, executives operate in an environment where reality doesn't intrude very much. The top-level management decides a song is a good thing, and then inflicts it on the sales force or plays it as a backing track at a conference."

Song downloads - from companies including Ericsson and PricewaterhouseCoopers - have in the past week trebled the total bandwidth taken up by ZDNet's British website. More than 6,000 people downloaded the McKinsey anthem on Wednesday, and as word spreads, traffic is growing fast.

The lyrics of IBM's Ever Onward ("Our products now are known, in every zone"), admittedly about 70 years old, were downloaded 5,130 times last week, with technology company SGI rising fast for a song written to promote a new workstation. A typical couplet: "I have a dream, and it's called a graphics pipe/It really works, and it's not just PR hype." The chart has already attracted new submissions, including one from Ernst & Young.

Most of those in the Top 20 were commissioned as motivational sales tools or extensions to company branding. KPMG's tune - which an employee confesses to ZDNet "is awful, awful, awful, and we are very embarrassed to be associated with it" - was written for the German branch in 1999.

A KPMG official was reluctant to deconstruct the song's deeper significance, but suggested that its newfound popularity "has to be a good thing" for the corporate brand. McKinsey officials were also reluctant to discuss their No 1 status. "It's not an official McKinsey anthem," a spokeswoman insisted after confirming the corporate line with New York. "It was just a group of people in our research and information unit getting together to have some fun."

Other entrants in the chart were, however, more excited about their achievements. Jon Bunn, British head of media relations for PricewaterhouseCoopers, was delighted that the company held both the No 3 and No 4 positions.

SHLOCK 'N' ROLL: THE TOP FIVE
1 McKinsey & Company
McKC

We are M-C-K-C McKinsey Knowledge Centre
Na na naaaa na ni na-na-na ni na-na-na ni na...
Hey! M-C-K-C is the place to be;
The team is great, one goddess -see!
You've got gritty, you've got a request
M-C-K-C gonna give you the best.

2 KPMG
Our Vision of Global Strategy

We create, we innovate
We pass the ones that are la-a-ate.
A global team, this is our dream of success that we create.
We'll be number one, with effort and fun.
Together each of us will run for gold that shines like the sun in our eyes

3 PricewaterhouseCoopers
Your World

United we are moving
In unity we stand -
PricewaterhouseCoopers,
Sounding like a band
We don't sell no dogma;
What we got is skill.

4 PricewaterhouseCoopers
Downright Global

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(The Times, April 3, 2002)

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The Times: Tech column - Drive-by hacking/DVD Easter eggs/A better "Error 404" message

By David Rowan

It is known as "drive-by hacking" or "net stumbling", and last week a fashionable London noodle restaurant became the latest victim of today's most prolific security breach: the capture of a private wireless network. These local "Wi Fi" networks are on the rise, and for convenience they cannot be beaten: when you order a ramen soup from a waitress at Wagamama, the details are transmitted straight from her Compaq iPaq handheld computer to a terminal in the kitchen. Unfortunately, Wagamama - like almost all British firms now installing wireless networks - neglected to follow some basic security precautions. This leaves them vulnerable to a nearby hacker armed with little more than a laptop.

"In less than one minute we had enough information to access the network entirely, and start to have some fun," a hacker who targeted a West End branch of Wagamama told the news website VNUNet. "No wireless encryption protocol, no passwords, not the slightest difficulty to pick up the signal and start snooping." The company seems not to have realised that a wireless network is a pushover unless it is secured.

It is not the only one. According to new research from Digilog and the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), some 94 per cent of London's wireless corporate networks are wide open to hackers. These include financial institutions, law firms, media companies and government departments - more than 5,000 offices whose wireless networks fall short of the required security protocol. "Hackers can access the e-mails people are writing, the financial transactions they are making, the codes they are using to connect to the Internet," according to Pottengal Mukundan of the ICC's crime-fighting unit.

A number of IT managers I spoke to confessed this week that they are only beginning to tackle the vulnerability of the most prevalent wireless standard, known as 802.11. Although it comes with its own security protocol, known as WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy), all too often the network is set up straight from the box. A hacker can then use easily available tools to break in.

And that means that any company that fails to secure its wireless network is inviting the world inside.

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Did you get the Easter egg you were hoping for? No, not the chocolate one, but the hidden code embedded in some software that gives you an unexpected surprise. Programmers have long inserted mini-cartoons or games in PC applications, launched by a certain combination of keystrokes - such as the Spy Hunter-like game hidden in Microsoft Excel 2000. But the real growth area today is in DVD Easter eggs, with programmers packing movies with concealed outtakes or extra interviews.

One website, DVDeastereggs.com, has counted more than 600 movie-based goodies. on the moulin rouge dvd, you can click on a green fairy to see embarrassing out takes of the can-can, for example. Initially it was a way for bored programmers to remind the world that they were "creative". Today, it is a useful way to generate "buzz" around a film. But it also helps to explain why the DVD, with its huge capacity to store data and its easy interactivity, has taken over from the video cassette.

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A missing web page usually prompts a frustrating"Page Not Found" or "Error 404" message. But not at the Hull phone company's ISP, Karoo.net, whose Web servers respond in person."Nothing helped," the error page apologises as new sentences keep scrolling up the screen."I'm really depressed about this. You see, I'm just a web server. Here I am, brain the size of the Universe, trying to serve you a simple web page, and then it doesn't even exist! Where does that leave me? I mean, I don't even know you. How should I know what you wanted from me? And where do you get off telling me what to show anyway? Huh?" Good to know that the spirit of Douglas Adams lives on.

(The Times, April 3 2002)

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Evening Standard: The most expensive obit in history

By David Rowan

IT WAS, for a late-breaking Saturday news story, a remarkable turnaround: 41 instant pages in the Sunday Mirror, 57 in the Sunday Express and an extraordinary 74, including a glossy colour magazine, in The Mail on Sunday.

The Queen Mother's death, announced at 5. 45pm, could barely have come at a worse time for Sunday papers preparing to send their first editions for printing - not least the People, finally able to splash on a footballer's indiscretions with a lapdancer. So, here's to professionals such as Sir Roy Strong, whose name appeared above a few thousand words for both The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph; and well done Ingrid Seward, who figured not only in The Mirror and the People, but also the Sunday Express.

The instant coverage was, of course, not instant at all, but the result of the most extensive forward planning in modern journalistic history. Every daily and Sunday national, bar the Morning Star, had planned its Queen Mother send-off for years, and for some broadsheets for two or three decades. According to Don Berry, who spent 15 years overseeing The Daily Telegraph's and then the Evening Standard's coverage until his retirement last month, the extensive rewriting over the years "must make these supplements some of the most expensive ever produced". So was it all worth the effort?

Early indications in the trade are that circulations received a useful boost for a quiet Bank Holiday weekend, but the years of tinkering came at a heavy financial cost.

"This must be one of those unusual moments in the history of the British press when it goes all altruistic," says Andrew Roberts, the historian whose commissions this week have appeared in The Sunday Telegraph, The Daily Mail and Daily Express."I wouldn't have thought the increase in sales would justify the money spent: they've used all the top historians, from Kenneth Rose to Philip Ziegler, rather than the 30p-a-word types. But it's not like 11 September or Princess Di's death, when people have a ravenous appetite for it."

At The Times, for instance, Monday's obituary was the result of "20 or 30 years of tinkering", according to Ian Brunskill, the obituaries editor. "There were two main hands in the ink - one writing about 20 years ago, which involved overhauling what was there and turning it into a much better piece, and someone else, more recently, taking in the various revisions. It must be the single most worked-on obit in history." Money was saved by conducting most revisions in- house, although the subject's lack of activity lately meant that nothing major was changed for some time. "I'm sure the other papers were as prepared as we were," Ian Brunskill says. "It's the one you really could see coming."

At The Daily Telegraph, this week's extensive coverage results from a nightmare the then editor, Max Hastings, suffered in 1986. "In his dream, the Queen Mother had died and there was nothing prepared," explains Don Berry, then assistant editor. "He woke up in a cold sweat, and I was despatched to arrange the first of many obits.

"There was a routine updating whenever she had a cold, or when new pictures came through," Berry says. Then, six years ago, Berry was asked to perform the same task at the Evening Standard, which eventually resulted in last night's pre-printed supplement.

"One of the hazards was that contributors died before the Queen Mother did," Berry recalls. One of his pieces was by John Grigg, who died last December. The BBC's film obit on Saturday night faced a similar problem, with the late Princess Margaret among contributors.

SO are editors relieved that the years of tinkering are finally over? "I wouldn't express it as relief, but as it's always been there niggling at the back of your mind, you're pleased to get it out of the way," says Andrew McKie, obituaries editor of The Daily Telegraph.

"Then you start worrying about the Pope, Ronald Reagan, or other members of the Royal Family."

McKie made his final changes as late as 7pm on Sunday, but denies that the final obit was simply a decades-old piece that had been knocked about.

"It's not the same piece worked on since 1975, as if it's a stone that gets covered in more and more barnacles. You have to rework obits according to changes in circumstances." He cites the Times's obit of economist Friedrich Hayek, which "had to be changed completely not because there was anything factually wrong, but because it was written at a time when he was highly out of favour. By the time he died he was a guru of the new Right."

Andrew Roberts, now commentating for CNN, believes that the papers "have generally got it right - which doesn't come as a surprise seeing how long they've had to prepare". But he is "saddened" by the Guardian letters this week pointing out her faults. "When the body's not yet cold, to have letters showing such a fantastic lack of respect is saddening but not surprising," Roberts says ."They obviously choose the letters that represent the paper's voice."

Seumas Milne, Guardian comment editor, insists that the letters printed were representative of the mailbag.

Deputy editor Georgina Henry explains that the paper chose to take a less fawning view of the event. "There are no constitutional implications of her death, and The Guardian has a well-known position on the Royal Family which is shared by many of our readers," Henry says. "We therefore had no interest in producing the kind of enormous special supplements seen elsewhere." The paper prepared four pages of an obituary and pictures, and commissioned Christopher Hitchens to provide "the alternative view".

Still, elsewhere in Fleet Street, those who can deliver the more respectful appreciations remain in great demand. Ingrid Seward, editor- i n - chief of Majesty magazine since 1983, was last night "exhausted - and it hasn't even begun yet". Seward confesses that she wrote most of this weekend's pieces 12 to 18 months ago (not the case for her exemplary article in last night's Standard, though). She is still contracted to cover the funeral for Canadian TV, has just appeared on Sky, and is about to edit Majesty's commemorative issue, which has been planned for 15 years."Nearly everything has been written, but they want more," she says. "Still, you might as well work when you can."

(Evening Standard, April 13 2002)

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