“Opinions are like assholes – everybody has one.  At his age your father should know that not everyone wants to see his butt, or hear his opinion.”
- Jake Grafton, The Intruders by Stephen Coonts

A couple lived near the ocean and used to walk the beach a lot.

One summer they noticed a girl who was at the beach almost every day.

She wasn’t unusual, nor was the travel bag she carried, except for one thing;
she would approach people who were sitting on the beach, glance around and then speak to them.  Generally, the people would respond negatively and she would wander off. 

But occasionally someone would nod and there would be a quick exchange of money and something that she carried in her bag.  The couple assumed that she was selling drugs and debated calling the cops, but since they didn’t know for sure, they decided to just continue watching her.  After a couple of weeks the wife said, "Honey, have you ever noticed that she only goes up to people with boom boxes and other electronic devices?" 

He hadn’t, and said so.
Then she said, "Tomorrow I want you to get a towel and our big radio and go lie out on the beach.  Then we can find out what she’s really doing."

Well, the plan went off without a hitch and the wife was almost hopping up and down with anticipation when she saw the girl talk to her husband and then leave.

The man then walked up the beach and met his wife at the road.
"Well, is she selling drugs?" she asked excitedly.

"No, she’s not," he said, enjoying this probably more than he should have.
"Well, what is it then?  What does she do ?" his wife fairly shrieked.
The man grinned and said, "She’s a battery salesperson."
"Batteries?" cried the wife.
"Yes!" he replied.

"She Sells C Cells by the Seashore!"

(as sent in by a reader)

For those times when you don’t want a PC to try to establish a partnership with your Windows Mobile device, you can use this registry file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows CE Services]
"GuestOnly"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows CE Services]
"Sync window display mode"=dword:00000000

Update 28 July 2009:
As msalvai comments below, it may not work with WMDC.  I’ve had mixed results myself.  I’m going to do some further research to find out if it REALLY works or not.

- the less you see of them the more tranquil your life.
(L/Col Jocko West)  The Red Horseman by Stephen Coonts

Since a reader asked “What did you use for screen capturing, with your recent PDA posts”.

Windows Mobile
I use Pocket Controller Pro, which I mentioned here.  There is a short trial period.  I like it so much, that I now own a copy.

BlackBerry
BBScreenShooter by Michael –oppi- Oppermann

The PDA posts were:
Pocket Professional Pro – I’m impressed
Built-in PDA browsers are crap, and here’s why
Free GPS Street Mapping software

1. Open a command prompt (as administrator).
2. Run "cscript c:\windows\system32\slmgr.vbs -skms IP_address_of_KMS:1688 && slmgr.vbs -ato"

 
Computer Associates used to FREELY share their product information.

These days?  Nada.

Saw this back in 2003, and you can find the original here:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=80765

By Eric Cole

To make sure you understand your organization’s issues, you should be asking the following questions before formulating a security plan:

1. What is my organization’s critical information or digital assets? Every company has information that’s unique to it. In some companies, this question is easy to answer, and in some cases, it’s very difficult. You have to figure out what pieces of information, if compromised, would put your company out of business or make it difficult for you to continue operating.
2. On which servers does the critical data reside? Attackers break into servers, which provide the gateway to the data. Therefore, knowing where the data is lets you concentrate your security efforts. It’s also important to prioritize servers. Most companies have a large number of servers, and not all servers have the same level of importance
3. What are the risks to those servers? Risk is composed of threats and vulnerabilities and can be reduced by countermeasures. The following is the common risk formula: Risk = (Threat x Vulnerabilities)/Countermeasures. A threat is an adverse occurrence that allows someone to do harm to you or your assets. A vulnerability is a weakness that allows a threat to be manifested. A countermeasure is an action you perform to minimize or eliminate either the threat or the vulnerability. The important thing to remember is that if you reduce either the threat or the vulnerability, the resulting risk is also reduced. You only have to reduce one of them, not both. For example, a threat is that someone can run an Internet Information Server (IIS) buffer overflow against your external Web server. The vulnerability is that your company is running external IIS Web servers. Depending on the specifics, your risk could either be high or low. From a countermeasure perspective, there are three general approaches you can take. First, you can do nothing and accept the risk. Second, you could take actions to minimize the risk. In this case, you could minimize the risk by staying up to date and apply the latest patches in a timely manner. Third, you could eliminate the risk by taking the Web servers off-line. As you can see, in most situations, reducing the risk is the most practical approach.
4. What is the return on investment for reducing or eliminating certain risks? Executives have to be concerned with the financial affect of given security decision. Spending $500,000 to fix a problem that has a 10% chance of occurring and would cost the company $100,000 if it occurs, isn’t a good ROI. On the other hand, spending $50,000 to eliminate a risk that has an 80% chance of occurring and would cost the company $800,000 if it occurs is a wise investment.

Here are the key questions you need to ask to determine the ROI for a given risk:

• What is the risk?
• What is the likelihood of it occurring?
• If it occurs, what will it cost?
• What will it cost to eliminate the risk?
• What will it cost to reduce the risk to an acceptable level?

Armed with the answers to these questions, you can spend money in the proper areas.

There is a long list of additional questions that an executive should ask, but the above questions form a foundation for all of the other questions. The above questions also give CIOs a clear view of where the problem is and how bad it is.

Remember, security is mostly about understanding your infrastructure and not necessarily spending money. Taking the time to answer the above questions will best enable you and your management peers to make sure your security dollars are well spent.

Update: Questions to Ask Your Security Vendor

As seen here:
Beware: The daft egg-box warning that contents ‘may contain eggs’

Google Maps.

Heck, I’m impressed with it.

• It’s free (apart from the mobile data charges)
• It’s accurate
• It does travel routing (but not “turn-by-turn” )
• It can download Google Street Maps images

But even if you don’t have GPS, Google Maps will determine your location via cell / mobile phone towers.

I was inside a building when I snapped this screenshot, and Google Maps displayed “Your location is accurate to within 600 metres”
 
In GPS mode, Google Maps is accurate down to 3 metres.

Travel routing:

And the destination was Flinders Street Station (with Street View):

You can get Google Maps here.

A reminder, you may incur data charges from your cell phone carrier.