By now, the death-grip of the world's quadrennial football carnival will have eased. In its wake: skull-cracked hooligans, bent barstools, trashed plasma TVs and maybe even a few careers: some workers on the mainland reportedly quit their jobs rather than request a month's leave to stay up all night watching Togo and Tunisia boot around a leather orb.

And let's not forget the crucial role of IT in throttling cyber hooliganism and virtual absenteeism. One security firm promised to "enable organizations to prevent or minimize the network impact of employees viewing World Cup football" by providing "stream splitting for live video and local caching for on-demand video" by using a 'policy engine enables granular control over content usage."

The NASDAQ-listed firm said in a press release that "even a handful of employees simultaneously accessing streaming video or downloading video clips can saturate an organization's Internet connections, hampering connectivity for business-critical activity...many organizations also fear the loss of employee productivity." Oooh.

But help is at hand, said the firm, promising that its appliances could "manage employee video viewing in multiple ways," including:

' Blocking content, based on media type/site/type of site/content