BuzzBites: Mars and Venus on the Internet

Mars and Venus on the Internet

They say men are less likely than women to ask for directions. A new survey says men are also less likely to call the helpdesk. Only 30 percent of men will contact IT if their computer is infected with spyware, compared with 64 percent of women, according to Web@Work, an annual study conducted by Websense.

Men are also twice as likely to look at online porn in the office, either inadvertently ("What? There's nudity on the Internet? I'm shocked!") or intentionally. However, there's a surprising similarity in the percentage of both sexes who admitted to purposely visiting porn sites at work: 6 percent of men and 5 percent of women confessed to intentional naughty surfing. Maybe someone should get these two groups together. -- Andrew Conry-Murray

$250,000:

That's how much a school district in Atlanta overpaid for phone service because a lower bid for the contract got stuck in the district's spam filter. The lower bidder, ITC Deltacom, had originally submitted a formal, bound copy of the bid. The district contacted the provider by e-mail with further questions, but a response was never received. The contract eventually went to BellSouth.

ITC Deltacom protested the decision, saying that other e-mail from the same address hadn't been snagged in the filter, but the school superintendent declared the matter closed.

The district's IT staff speculated that the term "long distance" triggered a filter that screens for lewd content. Sounds like it's time to loosen things up a bit. -- Andrew Conry-Murray