Shark Tank

THIS MIDWEST OUTFIT is ready to go online. Wants to stick with Linux and existing hardware if possible. Sets up an audit.

Consultant pitches an all-new, high-dollar setup. IT says no thanks. Get this:

The jilted sales rep writes a report claiming IT is "recklessly endangering our corporate data and gives it to our corporate attorney," a pilot fish fumes.

Happy ending: The business owner is furious at the end run. Pistol-whips the sales rep.

HAS AN ASSOCIATE CIO at a certain federal agency really recommended that the agency buff up security by simply denying FTP and HTTP at the firewall? Jeez, the specter of rioting bureaucrats ... ugly. Sorry, the Shark can't tell you which agency this prime cut is about.

Funny how sales reps forget things. This one Symantec rep sold a big IT shop Norton's AntiVirus. Major benefit: remote installation and discovery. But then a pilot fish finds a note buried in a readme file: He couldn't use the remote features "unless I went around to every client and server on the network, installed IPX and rebooted them. Sort of ruins the benefit of not having to send a tech out." Sharky called Symantec. The vendor 'fessed up. Said it's fixing the snag this week.

A PRESS RELEASE from a PC maker included the usual rave review from an analyst.

But where the analyst's name should go, it read: "Joe Analyst, Quotes Three for a Buck." A reporter-type pilot fish says the vendor's PR staff wrote up the quote, then shopped for an analyst who'd hang his name underneath it. Didn't find one in time. And they wonder why users are cynical.

Actress Hedy Lamarr, a flat-out bombshell (often ooh-la-la'd by Sharky's dad) from the '30s and '40s, died last week. True fact: Lamarr shared the patent that led to "spread spectrum," an antijamming scheme now used in wireless networks. Keep the Tank jamming along: sharky@computerworld.com. For a daily jelly roll: computerworld.com/sharky. Your item runs, you get a T-shirt.

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