I was on a conference call today with two programmers from a VERY large over night shipping company. They said in passing that recently someone at at their company "lost" a laptop that contained over 15,000 customer accounts, including names and account numbers! The person no longer works there, but this brings up two issues:

1. Why do large corporations like this one allow employees to place this sensitive information on portable devices?
2. How secure are these laptops if they are stolen or "found"? I'm sure any hacker could get into the system and recover the data.

I'm sure this is a much bigger problem than most of would like to admit. I Googled this to see if it was in the news... it was not.

I hope to see you all at the 2007 San Diego Rock & Roll Code Camp coming up on June 30 - July 1.

Those of you that live in San Diego, don't forget about my UCSD Classes!

Also, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book: VSDN Tips & Tricks .NET Coding Standards, so I can buy an Intel based MAC!

Why You Need .NET Coding Standards

Why You Need .NET Coding Standards.zip (1.11 MB)

Building Rich & Interactive Web Applications with ASP.NET AJAX

Building Rich & Interactive Web Applications with ASP.NET AJAX.zip (1.61 MB)

Photo's from Code Camp below:

The reason is that I work about 4 miles from where I live in the Del Mar area. My 10 - 15 minute commute home every evening is now taking 30 - 60+ minutes! As soon as the fair is done then racing season starts... we don't get a break all summer! Fridays are really bad during racing season because of the late start and concerts.

I don't think the owners/ promoters of these events give any thought to the many thousands of people that are put out for 3 months and we get nothing out of it.

This section will tell the story of how the small company I work for (about 450+ people) was taken over by a very large company. While this happens all the time, I will focus on outsourcing because our new company takes this to a whole new level. They outsource everything and I mean everything from IT, accounting, HR, recruiting, facilities and more. I’m not sure who even works at the home office? Okay maybe the VP’s and the project managers that oversee the outsourcing, but that’s about it. I have never seen an abuse of outsourcing as I have witnessed since they purchased us. I could care less if it worked, but it doesn’t from what I have seen so far.

I have never seen a bigger waste of time and money. Sure, outsourcing on the surface might be cheaper but it takes about 5 outsourced people to do the job of one of us! I will for now not reveal the company that purchased the company I work for but I might use real first names.

Stay tuned!