Naked ambition
Internet nudity, particle physics and private jets is how Dave rolls this week
It seems a channel man's social media persona has provoked more extreme responses from the public than you would expect for an IT distribution exec.
It happens that my channel chum's Twitter handle is nigh on identical to the name of a well-known yoof television star. (No, I've got no idea either.) My pal is often bombarded with praise, professions of love, requests for money and thinly veiled threats that are intended for his famous almost-namesake.
Clearly mortified, the exec told me that he's even been contacted by some young lovelies sending him pictures of themselves in the nip.
I told him that anyone who thinks it's OK to send this sort of muck to complete strangers should be set straight in no uncertain terms. I'm pleased to report he's forwarded the offending material to me for a thorough investigation.
Court in the act
Apple is no stranger to patent litigation, but its defeat to Samsung in the High Court in London last week must have been easier to stomach than most.
The fruity firm had argued that the Samsung Galaxy Tab was too similar to its own tablet PC offering (I forget the name). But Judge Stephen Fry suggested there was no danger of anyone confusing the two firms' technologies. Sorry - that's Judge Colin Birss.
"They do not have the same understated, extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design; they are not as cool," he said of the Samsung kit, possibly while a group of lithe, multi-ethnic and brightly clothed dancers pulled shapes to some insufferable disco-indie-electro-rock gubbins.
Plane sale-ing
I'm sure I don't have to tell you that times are tough, dear reader, and everyone is facing cutbacks. So I was pleased to see that even the tech world's leading enterprise vendors are getting into the penny-pinching groove with news this week that embattled phone maker RIM is trying to take $1bn in costs out of the business.
According to a Bloomberg report, the great scrimp will begin with the sale of one of the company's two private jets.
The craft going under the hammer is reportedly a nine-seat Dassault Aviation SA F50EX (that is one sweet ride, let me tell you), which RIM hopes to flog for $6m-$7m. The BlackBerry firm is hanging onto its 14-seater F900EX model.
Fair enough - you never know when you might need to whisk a prospective client off to Monte Carlo, and United Airlines economy class isn't going to impress anyone. In completely unrelated news, I've got a totally real client who's definitely interested in buying, say, 10,000 BlackBerrys. Give or take. If anyone from RIM is reading, I'd love to talk about how best to seal the deal.
ConCERNing news
I was glad to see this week that the rest of the world's scientific comprehension is as appalling as my own, as seemingly the only thing anyone noticed about the Higgs Boson announcement was the science bods' use of the much-maligned Comic Sans font.
The childish, cutesy scrawl of a font was used by professional physics-type person Fabiola Gianotti to unveil the results of CERN's research. Which famously included the discovery of the thing that is often dubbed the God particle. (No, me neither.)
Reaction to the move ranged from appalled (one person in the channel dubbed Comic Sans "the unwashed armpit of the Office font world"), to baffled, to faintly nauseous, to thoroughly indifferent.
And the world's online people were quick to start one of their trademark pointless internet campaigns, lobbying Microsoft to change the name of its rubbishest font to "Comic Cerns". A cause well worth getting behind, to be sure.
Alby Reid, who started the petition, said Dr Gianotti has "gone a long way to rehabilitate this awful, awful font".
Which obviously is her most enduring achievement.