Dear silicon.com... ID cards, Auntie's iPlayer, generation web 2.0, robot wars

What's got silicon.com readers reaching for their keyboards this week? Reader Comments of the Week showcases how our users are responding to the latest tech news and views on the site...

Identity issues
ID cards: The bidding war begins

Wise bidders will add a large premium, to reflect the very high political risk.

Bid winners may suffer a severe "skills crisis":

Who would want the (failed) ID project on their CV?

Who would want to face an angry shareholders' meeting to defend involvement in this crazy ID project.
-- Richard, UK

The term "IT outsourcing" in your story implies that the ID database will be held by a commercial company, with all the problems that may entail.
-- Anonymous, London

Editor's choice

silicon.com editor Tony Hallett flags up his picks on the site this week...

♦ The McCue Interview: British Energy CIO, Ian Campbell
♦ Five virtual world security worries for business
♦ Rail passengers to get free on-board wi-fi
♦ Skills Survey 2007: Big earners trending upwards
♦ Podcast: The Weekly Round-Up 10.08.07

Government will implement as fast as possible to avoid any public discussion on this vastly risky and unpopular project. Any supplier bidding for this business must be aware that when the public wake up to what is going on they risk not only losing money on the ID project but many people will be boycotting their other products and services too.

It would be great if Silicon can keep us informed as to exactly these bidders are.
-- Anonymous, London

Oh Auntie!
BBC iPlayer sparks broadband row

I got a nasty shock when I checked my internet usage on my 20GB per month connection at the beginning of last week. I'd uploaded about 1.4GB over the weekend that was due to the iPlayer. I only watched 1 or 2 programmes.

Many people will only discover this when they get the warning that they're about to go over their allocation, or even worse, when the bill comes for the extra.
-- Julian Nicholls, Lymington

Again the UK is lagging behind the rest of the wired world. With the recent report saying that the UK came near the bottom of the league for fast and cheap broadband and now when someone launches a state of the art service the ISPs bellyache about bandwidth usage.
-- Gareth Evans, Bath

It seems ISPs are keen to advertise all the things you can do when you sign up such as unlimited downloads, stream high quality videos etc but when you do they moan about it.
-- Anonymous, West Midlands

ISP's only exist to allow users to access content. If an ISP does not want its customers to access content then it will eventually die.

Bandwidth costs little to maintain, ISP's who use some of those monthly fees to keep increasing bandwith will win, those that dont won't.
-- Rob Garner, New York

Generation 2.0
Web 2.0 generation expect work on their terms

This is all very well but when will this people find any time to do any work?

This also goes both ways and companies who find their productivity levels to be dropping because this generation will either not employ them, preferring older staff who are committed or by upping sticks and moving to countries with a better work ethic and cheaper work force.
-- Guy Reynolds, Letchworth

The gist of this article is that flexible working, consumer technologies and a new wave of technophiles are a bit of a threat to IT environments and UK business leaders.

In my view, the reverse is true. Old style IT was so cumbersome and expensive that it virtually paralysed innovation and managers with poor IT skills could not overcome these barriers.

New web-based technologies, open-source software and young technophiles are empowering organisations to build and change systems quickly and responsively. This gives tremendous competitive advantage to companies prepared to take advantage of these changes.
-- Rod Dowler, London

My first reaction to this article was ' they (the web 2.0 generation) have got to be joking'. And then I realised that is probably a sign of my age. They have grown up with this and in the same way that our generations work environment has changed so much over, even the last 20 years, they will expect theirs too as well.

It does however present new challenges and I think we would need to move much more towards a goal-orientated work environment, as this will be the only way to ensure that the work that people are employed to do is being completed.
-- Sarah, Romford

You've got mail, lots of mail...
Email - the root of your work stress?

Email is not the problem, it is the lack of people's ability to use it properly. I am continually amazed by the number of people of either:

(a) don't reply to emails (especially some of my colleagues in senior roles); and

(b) don't read their emails before sending them to make sure they say what they intended them to say.

It's a perfect communication tool for the modern world. It allows people to manage their communication time more effectively and maintains an audit trail. It does, however, need to be used correctly - I've always wondered why there are no courses by default at schools/universities to get this message across?
-- Brian Murray, Edinburgh

Easy to solve - just set your email client to check for new emails once an hour or whatever, otherwise the temptation is always there to see whats just come in.
-- Anonymous, UK

And throw your Blackberry away!
-- Anonymous, London

Eco tech
The greening of IT: Why less is more

The PC World green PC is made to look good by consuming 40w instead of 300w of a "standard" desktop PC. However, although 300w is the rated power supply on the average desktop PC, in practice the power consumed when doing average tasks is more like 100w, so the difference is not as great as it first appears.
-- Paul Britton, Ashford

Robot wars
Peter Cochrane's Blog: Robots with guns

Its great to be philanthropic with our own resources, but when your driven by any motive beyond your own direct control you justify extremes. Whether the motive is a private army to protect a companies investment in natural resources against locals, advantage on the battle field, local terrorism or altruistic policing in difficult situations. Isn't this our constant dilemma – amplify injustice to justify greed & power, or balance the freedom of all to fairly develop positive potential for the world as a whole. Maybe for as long as the machines don’t have emotion they are at least only guilty of following our instruction.
-- Stuart Fawcett, London

Its the difference beween intelligence and wisdom.

You have to be clever to be able to build AI killing machines ... but stupid to do it.

Understandably, we don't like our human soldiers killing or being killed ...... but delegating killing to machines solves the wrong problem.
-- Captain Sensible, UK

Armed, remotely operated aircraft have been operational since at least 2002.
-- Alex, UK

So what happens when the "other side" has autonomous robots as well ? Will wars come down to pure economics - who can afford the larger number of robots.
-- Euan McMaster, Beckenham

Many great inventions have been developed as a consequence of military need and funding. Take for example the DARPA funding of the internet or the massive ramp up of production of penicillin for the World War.

Man has been inventing weapons since the stone age.
-- Chris Stevens, London

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