So, your ex-boyfriend posted that picture of you when you were snoring and looking generally unattractive? What better way to remove that picture than totally destroying the Internet.

Most of you may read the above statement and think, “Dean, have you been drinking again?”. However, researchers in the US have recently presented the theory behind a ‘cyberweapon’ that could bring down the Internet. Scientists at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have devised what they have termed as the ZMW attack which works by confusing the routers that control and route traffic around the Internet. By utilizing bugs in the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), the authors suggest that it is possible for a large enough botnet to confuse routers around it such that they are unable to traffic information in the correct manner.

However, some experts believe that we shouldn’t be hiding in the metaphorical Internet bunker just yet. Firstly, getting hold of a large enough botnet (the authors suggest you’d need about a quarter of a million machines) would be quite tricky. The largest botnet in the world (Srizbi) is estimated to have around 450k machines incorporated into it and they’re far too busy advertising Viagra. On a more serious note, the technical requirements need to perform this attack are quite intricate and would not be ideally suited to most botnets. Furthermore, other experts wonder whether it would bring down the Internet at all. According to Mark Handley in the magazine New Scientist, “Nobody knows if it’s possible to bring down the global internet routing system”. Continuing, Handley stated that “The simulations in the paper make a lot of simplifying assumptions, which is necessary to simulate on this scale,” he explains. “I doubt the internet would behave as described.”

The picture of you snoring is safe for now.

This article consists mainly of my opinions and not the opinions of Quext. In fact, Quext doesn’t have an opinion on football. If it did, it’d probably be the best opinion in the world.

On Friday we knocked up a football prediction machine. We loved it. We played with it. We put a picture of a donkey on the front page of its interface. So, don’t ask me how he’s done it, but Lawro has beaten our pride and joy. The final score in this match was Donkey-toting-football-predictor 3, Moustache-toting-Lawro 7. Well done Lawro. I’m not giving up though – I’ll be running it next week after a few tweaks. By tweaks, I mean it’s missing a picture of a camel from the prediction page.

In other football news, turns out Darren Bent has been enticed by the bright lights of Aston – an area renowned for, well, nothing of note – in a deal that will leave Steve Bruce and Niall Quinn unbelievably mad. A dangerous move, as it’s known worldwide that Quinny is no-nonsense and by that, I mean he’s as crazy as sack full of ferrets. One thing is for sure, if Bent does move to Aston Villa then the first thing they’ll need to do is reinforce their crossbar. Señor Bent has the third worst shot-conversion rate in the Premier League according to his number one fan* – the Daily Mail. That said, he has put away more goals for Sunderland than anyone else on his team, although in terms of an achievement it’s the same as being the best darts player in a game against an incontinent 95-year-old drunk.

Also hot of the news machine today is the news that Avram Grant is teetering on the edge of the cliff of employment. Prior to Saturday’s game, West Ham ensured that no decision would be made about the future of the manager on Saturday. Around that time, news started surfacing about a possible replacement with Martin O’Neill. MON is an exceptional manager, so he must be looking at the West Ham job and the way they’ve treated Grant with some intent. Personally, on a list of the world’s worst jobs I’d rank the West Ham Utd position as just above the man who tells Barry Austin that the local chip shop is shut. Even Julian Dicks, a guy that West Ham fans will know and love, claims that Gold and Sullivan of turning the club into a ‘laughing stock’ over their failure to end the growing speculation over Grant’s future. Now that MON has categorically told West Ham to stick their job offer on a boat and sail it into the Bermuda Triange, the hierarchy at West Ham have had no choice but to keep Avram Grant on. And fair play to Grant, he’s been pretty straight throughout all of this and continues to do the job day in, day out. However, you do wonder how he can be expected to manage his team when it’s clear that the powers that be didn’t want him to stay. Crucially for West Ham (and all the teams in the bottom three), the gap between the relegation zone and the zona de safety is not great. In fact, a mere six points seperates 20th and 12th positions. A lot of other intriguing things are going on at West Ham; if you’ve got a second I’d give this a read by the Daily Mail. Don’t worry, in this out-of-character article, they don’t mention immigration or benefit cheats even once.

How we got on

Birmingham 3 – 0 Aston Villa (Lawro: 1-1)
Lawro wins, and even got the score right.

Chelsea 3 – 1 Blackburn (Lawro: 2-0)
Lawro wins, and got another score right.

Liverpool 0 – 2 Everton (Lawro: 1-1)
Lawro wins.

Man City 3 – 0 Wolves (Lawro: 2-0)
Both right.

Stoke 1 – 2 Bolton (Lawro: 2-1)
Lawro wins.

Sunderland 3 – 1 Newcastle (Lawro: 2-0)
Neither right.

Spurs 2 – 3 Man Utd (Lawro: 2-1)
Neither right.

West Brom 3 – 3 Blackpool (Lawro: 2-1)
Lawro right.

West Ham 0 – 3 Arsenal (Lawro: 0-2)
Both right, but we got the score too.

Wigan 0 – 0 Fulham (Lawro: 1-1)
Both right, but Lawro got the score.

*sarcasm alert