This week has been a mixed bag on the technology front with a variety of interesting (and less interesting) stories hitting the news.

Google has managed to maintain a presence in China today avoiding the shutdown of its services in that part of the world due to a long running dispute over censorship.

More locally, the anticipated roll out of high speed fibre has run into some resistance from local residents claiming the boxes are too ugly for the street - an issue BT has successfully negotiated before and only a minor stumbling block in this latest round of broadband updates.  On the flip side, a parish council in Kent has just financed £13,000 of a total £75,000 bill for providing the community with fibre broadband - which may prove a precedent for other local communities.

The iPhone issues surrounding the reception are still ongoing with claim and counterclaim being thrown back and forth between various interested parties. Apple claims that the issue can be fixed by a software update that would make the reception indication bars more accurate, while others claim that it is effectively a short circuit of the antenna, caused by users gripping the phone in the wrong way.  When all is said and done, I am sure it will not affect the sales figures.

In other tech news a cryptanalyst has broken one of the cyphers used by the popular messaging client Skype - while this does not expose users to interception (because Skype uses multiple cyphers) there is concern that the publishing of this fact earlier in the year facilitated a spam attack upon Skype users.

The question prompted by my last two paragraphs is why do these apparent mistakes/weaknesses occur? The honest answer is that nothing can ever be perfect, no testing regimen, no matter how thorough and well thought out can entirely eliminate every possible issue, bug or error possible. All we can ask is that companies behave with integrity, have the grace and dignity to accept their mistakes, treat their customers fairly, and put the issues right promptly.