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Stand-up security

Posted on 18 Jan 2005 at 15:20

Mark Needham gets an earbashing over data security and experiences the joys of 3G phones

'Ahh... Problem solved! It seems that Nokia has improved the Bluetooth security of its phones. Since I last looked on its website, HP appears to have released a fix for the issue. See the following link for more details: 'h18007.www1.hp.com/
support/files/HandheldiPAQ/us/download/
21093.html'

If only solving all Bluetooth problems were this easy.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid
If you have ever been called upon by management to act like a performing seal in public you might appreciate this definition, tucked into the back of a book called In search of stupidity by Merrill R Chapman:

'Demo Dolly - an individual assigned to demonstrate a product, often to a member of the press or an industry analyst. Demo dollies can be of either sex. The most important personal characteristic of a successful demo dolly is the ability to nod wisely even when a member of senior management says something inane.'

The book is subtitled, Over 20 years of high-tech marketing disasters, and is mostly a canter through the errors made by US software houses in the 1980s and early 1990s. The author seems to have made a career of taking jobs at software companies about to self-destruct, but then there are enough of them about at all times. It is certainly a better read than In search of excellence, the 1980s business bestseller by Tom Peters that it sets out to mock.