"Families Hit by BBC 'Filth'" goes the headline in this week's Sunday Express.

Normally I wouldn't directly criticise another paper as no doubt people looking really hard might find the odd error or overcooked story in the Birmingham Mail...but in this case...

It's a story about the BBC iplayer saying that a Sunday Express 'investigation' has revealed "millions of children are bypassing strict guidelines and parental controls and watching shows meant for adults by using popular TV internet services such as BBC iPlayer.

"The result is that highly impressionable children are becoming hooked on TV programmes which have unsuitable images and dialogue, leading to long-term concerns for their mental health." (my bold - just to highlight a somewhat 'overenthusiastic' claim)

The evidence for this is compelling: "There are 19 million households with an internet connection in Britain, so this means that millions of children are downloading post-watershed adult material every day, sometimes without their parents' knowledge."

In other words people have internet connections so therefore they must be doing it. Not a great deal to pin a splash national Sunday paper story on.

The horrific show seen by the Express investigators was an episode of crime series Wallander which stars Kenneth Branagh. If that's the worst they could find then it's not much of a story really, is it?

Security does exist - BBC iplayer can be locked with a password if parents decide they want to set it up.

You would never find Express parent company Northern and Shell allowing children to view filth. No, their channels such as Television X which screen 'adult' films charge for access, requiring a credit card!

WOMEN in Birmingham are uploading pictures of better looking people or even their pets to Facebook because they are embarrassed by the way they look.

In a recent survey in the city 24 per cent of women said they would never put fat photos online, while 11 per cent said they un-tag themselves from every picture of them that appears on the social networking site.

One in ten people admitted to feeling physically sick when they saw their picture on Facebook and 12 per cent said they avoided having their picture taken in case they appeared online.

However 11 per cent of those surveyed said they did put recent pictures up to show old friends what they look like now and 10 per cent said they used the social networking site to show people how much their appearance has improved after losing weight.

Currently more than 22 million people in the UK use the site.

Look on Amazon and any game which utilises the Steam delivery system has some, erm, less than complementary reader reviews.

In fact people do seem to have something against any online only installing/updating system.

Windows live is another one which comes up for criticism, and one look at Assassin's Creed 2 for PC (54 reviews, 48 one star) shows the DRM system (yes another new one...) isn't exactly popular.

I can only call it like I see it, and today I installed the new Aliens Vs Predator on my PC.

Now, I've got the pack with the disks and haven't paid to directly download it, but no, Steam insists on utilising some kind of online validation system.

So instead of a max 2-3 minutes normally it took one hour seventeen bleeding minutes.

For some people this kind of wait just sitting there is a bit much, and they just give up.

I stuck it out - the game's pretty good.

But for some people Steam and other online delivery validation and copyright protection systems are a step much too far.

In the immortal (or rather sadly not) words of Hudson in the movie Aliens, for those fans it's "Game over man, game over."

A haulage firm launched an investigation today after a video emerged that appeared to show a lorry driver speeding along a motorway unaware a car was trapped under its bumper.

The mobile phone footage shows an Arclid Transport lorry travelling in the fast lane on the A1 near Wetherby, West Yorkshire, with a blue Renault Clio trapped sideways under its bumper.

Believed to be filmed in January by passengers in a vehicle travelling on the same road, the driver of the Clio, who has not been identified, appears to be trying to release the car from the lorry by pressing the brakes.

A male voice can be heard inside the car from which the dramatic scene was captured, shouting: "He hasn't even seen it."

It is believed the driver emerged without any serious injuries once both vehicles had come to a stop.

The footage was then posted on a YouTube page.

A spokesman for Cheshire-based Arclid Transport, which specialises in transporting bulk powders and granular products throughout the UK, said an investigation into the incident had started.

"I've no idea if the video is genuine," he said.

"We're actually doing an internal investigation at the moment."

A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said officers were aware of the footage but had no further details at present.

Common household devices are becoming redundant as consumers rely on increasingly advanced mobile phones, a poll suggests.

The mobile phone is slowly replacing digital cameras, alarm clocks, calendars and calculators, according to the survey for comparison website rightmobilephone.co.uk.

It found 54% of MP3 owners were more likely to use their phone for personal audio and 92% of those with a landline used their mobile more for calls. Of all the respondents, 21% said they only had a landline because it came with their entertainment bundle.

Google's street-level imaging service has been extended to cover more than 95% of UK roads.
From tomorrow, 360-degree pictures from Penzance to the Shetland islands will go online, encompassing nearly a quarter of a million miles of British roads.

Google's Street View service has been available in 25 cities since last March, but the increased coverage makes an additional 210,000 miles of detailed mapping public.

Street View images are captured by Google's car, fitted with a special panoramic camera on its roof. Pedestrianised areas were shot with Google's tricycle, including Stonehenge and the banks of Loch Ness.

A technical problem that stopped play for millions of gamers on older models of PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles has been fixed, Sony said today.

The bug hit at midnight on Sunday as the clock in the "fat" model of the console tried to recognise 2010 as a leap year.

Fans saw the console's date reset to January 1 2000 and were unable to connect to the online gaming system PlayStation Network.

Sony had urged owners of the model to stop using the machine as it could result in errors in some functions or the loss of data.

The problem did not affect the newer slim PS3 model.

Patrick Seybold, spokesman for Sony, said on the PlayStation blog: "We are aware that the internal clock functionality in the PS3 units other than the slim model recognised the year 2010 as a leap year.

"Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 - both GMT - we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally."

Below: An entirely pointless and gratuitous shot of Kimberley Stewart at the PS3 launch in 2006.