Intel puts two fingers up to world

IF YOU'RE a visitor to the fair shores of Blighty and you see a friendly Cockney sparrer leaning out of a white van and pointing two fingers in your direction, it's wise to assume that he's not wishing you victory in all your endeavours.

For putting two fingers up is a most offensive gesture, which is why Winston Churchill always smiled when he used "V for Victory" against the loathsome Nazis during the Second World War.

The gesture is said to come from the time when English archers made serious inroads against the French with their longbows. It's said that if the English archers were caught, the two fingers in question were chopped, and so it became a great game to exhibit these two digits to the French opposition.

It is roughly similar to the American obscene gesture using just one finger. So is the mysterious VIIV symbol two American obscene gestures flanked by two British obscene gestures? Surely not.

Nevertheless, Intel has a picture of two fingers up to the world on its VIIV web site.

Further, the two fingers appear to be pointing to a ViiV logo which uses the "Intel Inside" swish which as we reported earlier this week is no more. What can it all mean? The page is labelled "When Media Collide" and asks "what happens when all your media is put in one place?" Surely the answer to that question is Google News? *µ

*AS FAR as the Smashing Media together competition on the VIIV site goes, our Finnish readers would like to know why their country isn't listed as a location. One reader said that its beloved western neighbours Sweden, and its Karelia conscious eastern neighbours Mother Russia are included. And so too is Germany and plucky little Denmark. But not Iceland and not Finland.