My liver is doomed. It’s not my fault, but rather my career that is to blame it would seem. You see official government research has declared that be heaviest drinking professionals in England happen to be media workers, closely followed by IT professionals. And what do I do for a living? Oh yesh, hic, I recall now: I write about IT most of the time and for the rest of it I wear the IT consultancy hat.

So how bad is my drinking problem? Apparently I should be consuming around twice the recommended maximum of 21 units per week for a man. The Department of Health survey would have me drinking around 19 pints of beer a week in that case. The media profession out-drink the IT workers by some 10 units a week, which might explain why I don’t actually manage to keep pace with my official booze target. Heck, I’m lucky if I find time to get a decent meal let alone a decent drink.

Although it may surprise those of you who follow my writing output, I don’t drink and type. Considering that I work, on average, 10 to 12 hour days there really isn’t much time left to get off my face. Perhaps the real saving grace for my health can be revealed later in the same report which reveals that around a third of media workers feel pressured to drink by work colleagues. Thankfully I have none, being your typical self-employed freelance misanthrope banging away at a keyboard in splendid isolation away from all possible real world social interaction with people. I’m guessing that having a swift half with an avatar or Orc does not count?

The Army News Service reports that the US Army has opted to form a strategic alliance with Vista by migrating all of its Windows-based computers by December 31st 2009. The systems change, which will include upgrading from MS Office 2003 to MS Office 2007, has been ordered so as to “bolster Internet security” and standardise information systems.

According to Dr Amy Harding, Director of Enterprise Information Technology Services for the Army, currently some 13 percent of computers have already been migrated to Vista. “It’s for all desktop computers on the SIPR and NIPRNET” Harding said, of classified and unclassified networks. Standalone weapons systems networks are exempted, of course.

Some have suggested that the US Army has somehow declared war on Windows 7, but that would be missing the point. It has not said no to Windows 7 but rather not even asked the question as of yet. The decision to move to Vista was mandated in a ‘Fragmentary Order’ that was published way back in November 2008. It takes time and a lot of testing before a decision to upgrade any large enterprise to a new OS can be made, the Army is no different in this regard. If anything, one would hope it takes even longer than an ordinary business in making these decisions. Indeed, any suggestion that Windows 7, which has not even been released yet, should be up for consideration is laughable. As Marcus D. Good, Chief of the Information Technology Systems Support Division at DOIM, says “The Army has been testing Vista since its release and has run it through the Army Golden Master program. The Army Golden Master program is responsible for the release of the Army standard baseline configurations for commonly used computing environments within the Army Enterprise Infrastructure, the team responsible for making sure applications that ran on XP will run on Vista.”

Of course, many will be asking why the US Army is using Windows at all, let alone Vista which was voted the worst performing IT product of the year recently.

The week started off OK for YouTube, with the news that it was now seeing a rather impressive 20 hours worth of video clips being uploaded to the site every minute of every day. It did not take long for the week to go pear-shaped, however. First with the 4Chan Porn Bombing episode which saw hundreds of video clips purporting to be family friendly kid’s clips actually containing hardcore pornography content. The sickos behind this stunt, who have been boasting of their exploits in various online forums, seem to think it amusing to expose kids to sexually explicit material and have justified the action by claiming it was done to expose how easy uploading porn to YouTube is. I have said it elsewhere, and I will say it here. Dumbass. Sick, twisted and moronic dumbass in fact.

Just as the powers that be at Google must have thought the week could get no worse, and with a weekend coming up as well, PandaLabs has today revealed that it has discovered nearly 5000 videos on YouTube which contain comments that link to malicious web pages. OK, so it isn’t quite in the same league as the dumbass YouTube Porn revelation, but I feel sure that Google could have done without it, nonetheless. Let’s face it, using comments on a web 2.0 site to try and herd users towards malware sites is nothing new. Digg and Facebook have seen it, Twitter has seen it, and I feel pretty sure that YouTube has seen it in the past as well. So what is different this time? Well, that number for one thing. PandaLabs tells me it has detected 4900 videos in all, so far, with malicious links in the comment fields. Using the usual manipulation logic of the malware merchant, these comments suggest the link will take the user to a site hosting porn videos, and no I do not mean YouTube itself despite that earlier news story. The sting is the old ‘download a file to view the video’ one, in this case, or in 4900 cases should I say, everyone gets a copy of a fake antivirus solution called PrivacyCenter which does a fake scan and then offers a premium version at cost to clean up the infected system. A typical scareware scam in other words. What does not seem typical, at least for a YouTube scam, is the execution of the commenting.

“The technique of using malicious comments on YouTube is not new in itself. What is alarming however, is the quantity of links we have detected pointing to the same Web page. This suggests that cyber-criminals are using automated tools to publish these comments” Luis Corrons, Technical Director of PandaLabs says.

Freedom of information is pretty big news right now, just ask your local MP. But have you thought about your own situation with regards to eDisclosure for your business? According to new research by information risk management outfit Recommind, nearly half of UK enterprises have experienced an increase in eDisclosure requests during the last year.

OK, so you might not have to worry so much about revelations of money spent on cleaning your moat or ‘flipping’ half a dozen London flats in a year, but the small matter of the identification, preservation and collection of electronically stored information for regulatory and internal investigations and law suits has the potential to become a big problem nonetheless.

Recommind tells me that despite the number of businesses getting more and more eDisclosure requests, two thirds of UK organisations can only muster no more than five percent of their IT budgets to address the issue. Some 90 percent are under the 10 percent of total budget spend boundary when it comes to provisioning properly and preparing for the almost inevitable eDisclosure time bomb to explode.

The figures are not altogether surprising, given that the same research suggests that most IT directors could pretty much care less. Most rated it as their lowest priority, an oversight that might just come back and bite them on the arse it would seem to me. Simon Price, a Recommind director, also shares this feeling.

“The problem is that eDisclosure is still seen as an American problem and for many UK companies, this is all the excuse they need to sweep it under the table” Price told me, adding “the reality is that this is a problem facing UK businesses and if the upwards trend continues, before long we’ll see firms over here subject to same level of scrutiny as their US counterparts.”

Why should you care? Well how about the financial penalties or even brand damage through reputational loss. The problem as far as I can see comes down to the basic misunderstanding of the place of eDisclosure within a business, and the responsibility held for dealing with it. Most companies put that responsibility with regards to budgeting and decision making on the IT department, yet it is legal that end up making the final eDisclosure decisions at a quarter of firms. And how much budget share does legal get? On average, less than 14 percent.

“There’s a danger that the IT team won’t necessarily recognise and fully comprehend which information should be preserved and disclosed, and which can be discarded” Price says, concluding “the legal department will be experts on this side of things, but they need the IT team to help ensure any technology processes and systems are accurate and up to the job.”

Recommind recommend (S’OK, this is not a tongue twister folks) the following to help prepare for when that eDisclosure bomb explodes under your business:

I am cheating on my wife, with my iPhone. Dammit, I admit it, I sleep with my iPhone, OK?

When I finish working of a night, which is often around 2am, I tend to unwind by reading the latest news or catching up with Twitter in bed. The iPhone is the perfect device for this, small and unobtrusive enough (in terms of both light emission and, courtesy of the touch keyboard, noise) not to bother my other half.

So I was not altogether surprised to get a press release today which revealed that I am most certainly not alone in cuddling up to IT in bed. A survey by endpoint data outfit Credant Technologies reckons that 27 percent of folk take a mobile device of some sort, be it an iPhone, netbook or lappy, to bed with them. Of those people who do work in bed of a night, 57 percent spend anywhere up to 6 hours a week at it. Nor was I surprised to discover that the majority of bed workers admitted their partners thought it was a “very annoying habit.”

I was a little taken aback to learn that 8 percent said they spend more time on mobile devices during the course of the evening than they do actually talking to their partners, however!

So what was the point of this survey and why did I get a copy? Because it was entitled “Laptop use in bed and the security implications” and had been designed to highlight the security implications of unsecured mobile devices. Presumably the implications of sleeping with an unsecured device, unsafe hex if you like.

And what were those implications? Here goes:

44 percent admitted they are holding important work documents on their mobile devices, and 54 percent of those were not encrypted. 20 percent added to the security problem by not using a secure wireless network while tapping away under the covers, the favoured bedtime connection option for 87 percent of those questioned. The problem being that 56 percent admitted they were moving company information around across it. Obviously hotel bed usage is high when it comes to sneaking a netbook under the covers, yet 47 percent did not bother checking if the hotel wireless network was secure or not first.

Michael Callahan, Vice President at Credant Technologies says “with increasing pressures on companies to comply with regulations, such as the Data Protection Act, we all have to respect our customers and employers by protecting the data held on our mobile devices, where ever we may be.”

HP has today sent letters to thousands of customers world-wide as part of a global recall concerning potentially dangerous notebook batteries. It has been more than two years since I last wrote about dangerous battery recalls but the issue is now right back in the media spotlight it would seem. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission has apparently received reports of batteries overheating and ‘rupturing’ which have caused minor property damage due to fire.

Here is the recall letter that has gone out to customers:

Dear Valued HP Customer,

In cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and other safety regulatory authorities, on May 14, 2009, HP announced a worldwide voluntary recall and replacement program for some of the battery packs used in certain HP, HP Pavilion, HP Compaq and Compaq notebooks. HP customers affected by this program will be eligible to receive a replacement battery pack for each verified, recalled battery pack at no cost.

We are taking this action as part of our commitment to provide the highest quality of service to our notebook customers. We are proactively notifying you of this issue and are prepared to replace all verified, affected battery packs.

Note: This recall is unrelated to any previous battery pack recalls.

HP and the battery cell manufacturer believe that certain battery packs shipped in HP notebook PC products manufactured between August 2007 and January 2008 may pose a potential safety hazard to customers. The batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard.

To reduce the likelihood that a battery pack failure will cause damage, stop using your battery pack immediately…

Here’s the thing: say you have invested a lot of time and money in shoving out yet another new Windows OS hot on the heels of, let’s face it, a not very well received new Windows OS in the shape of Vista. Then, obviously, you want people to try it, so some clever sort in marketing strategy says “why don’t we let users play with the release candidate of Windows 7 on as many different computers as they like, without restriction, for a whole year?”

You know what, it is actually a good idea. Until, that is, you get to the bit about what happens when that year is up. Or rather what happens before that year is up. Look, the smart money says that when you arrive at June 1st 2010, the day that the freebie expires, it stops working and offers an upgrade at a cost option or similar. Fair enough? Hey, even a little nagging during the month or so before to let people know that expiry is about to hit them in the face like a wet fish would be acceptable, and even sensible.

What is totally mental, and I mean running around the supermarket without your pants on shouting “where is the mustard” mad, would be to start shutting down the user PC every two hours until they upgrade to a paid for OS and to start this nutball feature THREE MONTHS before the thing actually expires.

Yet that is exactly what some loon at Microsoft thought would be a good idea, and that’s what is going to happen. Starting March 1st 2010 your PC will shut down every two hours.

Here is what Mental Microsoft has to say on the matter: “The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You’ll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.”

Oh well, that’s OK then.

I don’t suppose some a little more sensible could add a few words could they? How about someone from the Microsoft Partner experience side of things? ” To avoid interruption, it’s recommended that you and your customers rebuild test machines by using a valid Windows operating system before Windows 7 Beta and Windows 7 RC expire.”

OK, I give up, where are my underpants and a couple of pencils.

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Big Brother Britain is ever in the headlines, first with the news that the Home Secretary was planning a central database of every email sent, every mobile phone call made and every website browsed. This was swiftly followed by the denial, by the announcement that the Government was not planning any such central database at all. Instead, Jacqui Smith insisted that these plans had been scrapped and would be replaced by lots of smaller database to be maintained by individual Internet Service Providers at a cost of some £2 billion over the next 10 years. Of course, these databases will inevitably be linked and therefore easily searched as one by The Powers That Be, so it’s not exactly a U-turn of David Blunkett proportions.

Now comes the revelation that GCHQ, the super secret Government spy centre which everyone seems to know about anyway, is developing a £1 billion ‘Mastering the Internet’ technology which will do pretty much what it says on the tin: monitor and intercept every email sent, telephone call made, website visit and social network interaction. The Sunday Times says that a “huge room of super-computers will help the agency to monitor — and record — data passing through black-box probes placed at critical traffic junctions with internet service providers and telephone companies.”

While the Government is sticking to the ‘nothing to worry about here’ line by insisting that they will not be snooping on the content of any message but rather are merely interested in simply monitoring who is communicating with whom in order to help prevent crime and acts of terrorism, I would like to propose that we help them go the whole 10 yards and have full access to our email conversations at least.

So why don’t we just CC Jacqui Smith into every single email we send? I am sure that the Home Secretary will be able to find the time to sit down and read through them all, just in case we are talking to someone we shouldn’t be or saying something that could be deemed problematical. Better safe than sorry, and after all it is only a matter of doing one’s duty for Queen and country, and rather than cost us a couple of billion the Home Secretary, with her large expenses claims, could cover the cost of reading them all herself.

Oops, I nearly forgot: if you want to CC Jacqui Smith into all your emails you will need her email address.

smithjj@parliament.uk